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.

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.

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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