Grinding it out

Sausage maker George Ghanem isn't sure how long an entrepreneur needs to be in business before declaring success. Or how you even measure success.

If it simply means business survival, then the magic words are, "We're going to make it!"

But would he do it all over again, if he knew 10 years ago what he knows now? "I'm not so sure. Probably not."

Ghanem started Papa George's Inc. as a meat company in 1993, and has confronted all the problems of new entrants into the food industry as well as deeply ingrained consumer attitudes about food.

On top of that, he now has the challenge of persuading consumers that his low fat and, in some cases, no-carbohydrate meat products are consistent with their current dietary interests.

To overcome consumer perceptions and convince supermarket operators to keep his products in their stores, Ghanem and his three employees go directly to shoppers by offering samples in stores.

They served more than 2 million samples in Upper Midwest stores in the first eight years in business, with regular appearances at Cub Foods, Lunds, Byerly's and Kowalski's in the Twin Cities area. Supervalu Inc. has been the wholesale distributor for him in the Upper Midwest states.

The pace of heating and serving samples in stores and giving demonstrations at food shows hasn't slowed in the past two years, Ghanem said. He needs to keep up the personal pitches to compete with national market leaders Jimmy Dean and Johnsonville, which have significantly bigger advertising budgets than his.

Here are some of the perceptions he has to overcome:

For starters, he said, most shoppers think a low fat or reduced-fat pork sausage is a contradiction in terms. But he has removed about 55 percent of the fat found in rival sausage products on the local market.

Then there is the popular belief that most food flavor is in the fat. This was especially so back in the 1980s and early 1990s, when food companies were seriously trying to reduce fat and cholesterol in foods, he said.

"A lot of products back then showed what they were missing," he said.

What these perceptions add up to are general beliefs that are at odds with themselves. People want high protein foods such as meat for their popular diets today, he said, and they want to avoid other ingredients that they assume are in his meat products.

"We start by trying to get people to try our products to discover that they taste good," he said. "Then we can say, 'Oh, by the way, it's lower fat and good for you.' "

Finally, Papa George's is also trying to convince the fans of beef and pork in the Upper Midwest that they might enjoy the taste of ground, fresh American lamb as well.

This region of the country hasn't been a big lamb market, he said, although changing demographics are bringing more diversity to area dinner tables. Imported frozen lamb tastes different from locally raised American lamb, he said.

About 90 percent of Papa George's meat products are made from pork. The pork sausage links and fresh frozen pork sausage rolls carry labels noting they are made with reduced fat, no MSG or other preservatives, and no fillers.

Spices, however, give consumers choices or help them prepare meals using the products. The pork rolls, for instance, come in regular, sage and hot varieties, and the pork links are packaged as original, Italian and maple-flavor sausage.

The company also prepares and sells gyro meat in heat-and-serve packages and has an accompanying line of fat-free cucumber sauce.

Ghanem has received food science and product development help along the way from Minnesota's Agricultural Utilization Research Institute. The institute also has helped him design packaging.

Meeting shoppers and getting feedback from taste sampling also keeps Ghanem attuned to the area's likes and dislikes, he said. With that feedback, he regularly experiments with pork and lamb in a test kitchen in his Stillwater home, which also serves as a corporate office.

Meat processing and packaging is custom made for Papa George's by two meat plants, one north of St. Paul and another nearby in Wisconsin, he said. That arrangement would have to change if the company began to grow rapidly, he added.

In the meantime, growth often comes with one sample and one customer at a time.

The current low-carb diet trend favors his reduced fat meat products, he said. But new customers have to discover that connection.