By Owen Morris
I'm fascinated by the preparation of food, especially meat. Yesterday I went to Fritz's Superior Sausage Company at 103rd and State Line to see how professionals do it. Rob Reeves is a fourth-generation butcher, and his father, Bob, has more than 30 years of experience. Together, they cut, smoke and prepare cows, hogs, chicken and sausage. I arrived just as they were getting ready to put three whole pigs into the smoker for an event at Worlds of Fun. As Rob lifted the 120 pound hogs into place, Bob talked about the life of a butcher.
"You start at 6 a.m. and don't go home until 10 at night and people don't realize that... This week we didn't get a day off. There's a couch in the back to take naps. Around Thanksgiving, when the smokehouses are all full of meat, we won't go home at all because we can't risk making a mistake. So we'll check on them every couple of hours during the night."
Rob finished loading the pigs. He said that when he was four-years-old, he'd follow his dad around at the store, and worked for his father before leaving for Kansas State University and came back right after graduation. Rob is now in charge of day-to-day operations. "When I was younger, I used to have some trouble getting here on time but we don't butt heads very much. We know what we have to do."
The best day of his life, Bob later confided, "was when Rob graduated and came back to work."
Not only is Fritz's owned locally, but many of its supplies also come from local businesses.
"The hogs we get Winter's Meat in Blue Springs... In the smokehouses we only use hickory, and we get that from a wood supplier in Nevada, Missouri," Bob said as we toured the massive back area of Fritz's.
The building is 19,000 square feet, of which 17,000 are out of customers' sight. Within that space is seven smokehouses.
The fourth quarter of the year is always their best, and with Missouri and KU having strong football teams, the tailgating business has taken off even earlier than usual. "We smoked and prepared 500 pounds of ribs this morning," Bob said. "We'll probably do another 12,000 pounds before the year's over too," Rob quickly added.
Back at the front of the store, Bob showed me a picture of Fritz Plapp, his grandfather and the family's first butcher. "He came from Stuttgart to Kansas City. Why? I don't know. But in Stuttgart he had trained as an apprentice to a sausage maker... and after six years, he became a master sausage maker himself... we believe this photo is taken of him the day he got his degree."
Fritz would be proud to see his grandson and great-grandson carrying on the tradition.
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I would like to know i you know anything about a German Sausage the is called Easter Sausage?
Try their custom-made hot dogs! I believe the Peanut uses them in its chili dog ...
Whenever I think I've got the flash turned off, it's on and vice-versa. I'm pretty good at electronics overall but for some reason, cameras and me do not mix.
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