This story is part of our June 2026 issue. To read the print version, click here.



Wursts, wieners, frankfurters or hot dogs; whatever you call
them, there’s money to be made in sausage in Sacramento. While
large brands like Ball Park, Nathan’s Famous and Oscar Meyer
dominate grocery stores across the Capital Region, a few local
entrepreneurs have found their niche  in the industry.

“It’s a great protein, something quick and easy,” says Malcolm
Means, owner of Banger & Bite Sausages. “It’s a handheld, which I
love. When I was just a single guy, and I didn’t really know how
to cook, you could always boil a hot dog, right?”

A new sausage business takes shape

Means is a special-education teacher from Citrus Heights who
launched his own sausage brand last year. He’s also the brother
of Harold Pressley, a retired Sacramento Kings basketball player.
The idea for this business was originally pitched by his mother’s
cousin, Papps, who worked as a butcher at a Navy commissary.
After he died, Means decided to make the dream a reality.

Means designs each Banger & Bite sausage for a specific purpose,
such as grilling or sauteing for pasta dishes. (Photo by Rachel
Valley)

He then enrolled in the Roseville Rising
program, a 10-week training program for culinary entrepreneurs.
Today, Means contracts a butcher in Rancho Cordova to make
sausages with his recipes, which he sells online and at local
farmers’ markets. He also supplies local eateries, Creole Soul
Restaurant & Bar in Sacramento, Rockstarr Kitchens in Carmichael
and Ikeda’s in Auburn.

A trend Means has noticed is “meal-related” sausages, meaning
they’re designed for a specific dish, not simply put on a bun and
drowned in ketchup and mustard. His time-intensive boudin
sausage, a staple of Louisiana Cajun cuisine, and his upcoming
chicken marsala sausage are examples. Means has other recipes in
the works, like a sausage designed for beef stroganoff and a
peach chipotle sausage.

Means sources his ingredients locally. “Sacramento is a food
town,” he says, but he stopped short of calling it a sausage
town. Few local specialty sausage makers call the Capital Region
home, and even fewer who are Black like him. “That puts me in a
rare air. I love doing it, not just because of that. It’s just a
heavier lift for some, but I found my lane,” Means says.

From family recipe to store shelves

Mr. Pork Grill Factory USA is another sausage brand recently
started in the Capital Region. It’s the creation of Lina Luce and
her husband, Jeferson Heusner. Both are from Brazil and now live
in Rancho Cordova. Luce has a background in fashion design, and
Heusner is a professional chef. In late 2021, the couple opened
Quick Dish, a restaurant in Folsom specializing in
Brazilian-style barbecue. But the couple’s long-term plan was
always to sell their sausage, based on Heusner’s father’s recipe,
at grocery stores.

They closed the restaurant in 2023, after their son was
born, and focused on their sausage line. Mr. Pork was in three
markets by the end of 2024, and is now carried by over 80
retailers, including 10 in the Capital Region. Luce said their
sausages, like their smoked calabresa, are sought out by local
Brazilians who miss the flavors of home. Other customers are
drawn to their blend of spices, lack of artificial preservatives,
and distinctive ingredients like white wine, parsley and garlic.

“They accept us because we are different,” Luce says. “Customers
today, we see a lot more willingness to try new stuff and new
flavors. So that’s very good for us. It makes it a little bit
easier to sell and be in the market.”

When it came to getting their product into stores, the couple
didn’t partner with a distributor. Instead, they took their
product directly to smaller retailers to pitch it themselves.
This strategy was cheaper, but required effort, charm and
confidence in their brand. The couple shared their story and
offered to do in-store demonstrations. But at the end of the day,
Lina says, “Our product spoke for itself.”

Her husband used to make all their sausages himself, but since
last August, they have hired a contract packager in Sacramento,
allowing them to get USDA certified and sell in more stores.
Their ultimate dream is to land a large distributor, specifically
Sprouts Farmers Market.

A longtime shop keeps it simple

While some entrepreneurs are new to the sausage game, others have
operated in the Capital Region for decades. One example is a shop
that has no website, no Facebook page, and after a recent
rainstorm, no sign. But if you’re part of this community, it’s a
place everyone knows through word of mouth.

Samthong Market in Sacramento offers a variety of Southeast Asian
sausages, including some made in-house. (Photo by Rachel Valley)

Samthong Meat Market in Sacramento
carries some vegetables and other food staples. Above all else,
this shop specializes in Hmong sausages, made from pork mixed
with lemongrass, garlic, ginger, chili peppers and other
ingredients. They are traditionally served with sticky rice.

Co-owner Amber Vang handles the business side while her husband,
Tawn Vang, is the chief sausage maker. The shop was started by
her parents, who ran it for about seven years before passing it
on to their daughter in 2005. The business is named after her
father’s hometown in Laos, where many Hmong people lived before
resettling in the United States.

But why is sausage so popular among the Hmong people? Vang
theorizes it was an easy-to-make food that kept meat fresh for a
long time in an era without refrigerators. Now it’s part of the
culture. “Sausage is a Hmong staple,” she says. “Every party,
every New Year, you have to have your sausage.”

Every Monday, her husband makes a fresh batch in the back while
under the supervision of a USDA inspector. It takes two days to
complete. Curious customers are welcome to watch him practice his
craft from a distance, but space is limited. He can even make
custom orders tailored to a customer’s preferences.

Related: Eat
Your Way Through Sacramento’s Hmong Food Scene

Recently, Vang added chicken sausages as some customers have cut
back on pork and sodium. But the recipe passed down from her
mother’s aunt remains unchanged.

Decades of doing it their way

“Old is good. If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” says Robert
“Pete” Pettersen, of Lodi. He has owned and operated Lockeford
Meat & Sausage for 56 years in the rural San Joaquin County
community of the same name. Pettersen’s business card features
his hand-drawn cartoon portrait and the quote: “What we make, you
can’t buy anywhere else.” The card’s back lists 26 varieties of
sausage he sells, with the “smoked Dakota bratwurst” marked as
his flagship product. He also sells jerky.

Pettersen opened his shop along Highway 88 and
originally performed “custom work,” meaning he processed meat
from local farmers. When business petered out, he switched his
focus to sausage. It was a product he knew how to make, and
decided to go all in on tubed meat, “rather than go broke, like
the rest of them.” Years later, a master sausage maker from
Switzerland helped him improve his craft.

Related: How
Meat Markets Meet Needs

Today, the shop is so famous that Pettersen said someone is
trying to impersonate him to scam others. The shop has no
website, but lockefordsausage.com is listed on its Yelp page.
“It’s bogus,” Pettersen says, and claimed someone in India is
using it to sell fake gift certificates. He’s currently trying to
get it taken down.

But the confusion hasn’t deterred customers. It’s not uncommon
for the shop to have lines out the door. As Pettersen was
interviewed from behind the store’s counter, a customer from
Monterey interjected, saying he always stops by whenever he’s in
the area to fish. Another gray-haired man claimed to have been
eating Pettersen’s European-style sausage since childhood.

“What makes a good sausage? The guy that’s making it,” Pettersen
says. These days, it’s his son, York Pettersen, who is the shop’s
chief sausage maker.

Other butchers have come and gone in Pettersen’s time. In
Sacramento, Morant’s Old Fashioned Sausage Kitchen closed in 2020
after a fire, and V. Miller Meats closed last year. So how has
Pettersen’s shop stood the test of time?

“By the grace of God. He looks out for the dummies,” he says.

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