—Four generations of the family work at producing 130 products—
Pat Veine, left, and Garry Zick, president of the company, display a section of their retail shop. Veine works in retail and sales, and is also working on route expansion for product deliveries to other businesses.
By Kathleen Pullano
Editor
Garry and Patricia Zick, owners and operators of Zick’s Specialty Meats, 215 N. Mechanic Street in Berrien Springs, plan to add on an addition and build a new 3,000 square foot warehouse, and then transform their newly available space to meet their packing needs. The Zicks also own the house next door and plan to turn it into their offices. They have owned the home for 20 years, and have used it for meetings or for business people who have needed a place to stay.
Zick’s has been in operation in Berrien Springs for 42 years, having opened its doors in January of 1983. The company makes 130 different meat products and this would be their eighth expansion at their current location.
“We are working on obtaining a matching $150,000 grant from the United States Department of Agriculture for our new warehouse, which would cost about $300,000 to build,” Zick said. “We are planning on expanding and looking for different ways to fund it.”
The current warehouse would be used for production and new equipment, which is what is needed for their business to grow, he said.
Zick’s Specialty Meats is well-known locally for its custom sausages, bacon, bratwurst, ribs and more, but it is known throughout several states for its signature Zick’s Sticks. Zick Sticks are ready-to-eat round sausages that are smoked and dried, and shelf stable, similar to jerky.
Zick developed an interest in sausage making while working for his parents, Harry and Shirley Zick, who owned Zick’s Supermarket on Vineland Avenue in St. Joseph from 1961-1981, and then sold it.
Garry’s mom, Shirley, 92, does bookkeeping three days a week at her son’s business.
“Working for my parents is where I learned what I know how to do–I grew up in the supermarket business,” he said. “It is there I met sausage maker Max Wolf (who is related to Dick Schinkel, writer of the Jonesy column in The Journal Era). Dick’s parents, Ed and Edith Schinkel, sponsored the Wolf family to come to America.”
“I started working with Max when I was 13, in the summers, learning how to make sausage when all the other kids were playing,” he said. “I did not know it was work then; it was an apprenticeship; I was having fun learning the European-style of sausage making.”
“I was able to purchase Koebel’s Locker Plant in Berrien Springs in 1983, which had been built in 1941,” he said. People, before home freezers were common, used to buy their beef and pork from farms, have it cut up, and they kept it in rented lockers (freezers) at this plant–that is how people stored their food.”
His parents helped the young couple with their down payment on the locker plant, and they paid for it on a land contract.
“Interest rates were 20 percent…the bank would not loan me money–having a land contract was the only way I could afford to buy the business,” he said. “My parents came out of retirement; we could not have done it without them.”
“The first thing we did is decide to discontinue the lockers–there was not much income from those as people had their own freezers by then,” Zick said. “We were able to build a small sausage kitchen in that room. We built two brick smokehouses and started making custom sausage, and we continued to cut up beef and pork for farmers.”
“Zick Sticks were next, and that was the start of the future of the business, which is what we are still doing now,” he said. “The meat snacks are shelf stable, and the business has been growing at 20 percent a year. They are our niche.”
His business also does custom-processing for other businesses, and they smoke hams and bacon and other meat products, and the family offers a popular retail shop where people come to buy chicken wings, pulled pork, barbecued ribs, bacon, sausage, steaks, smoked salmon, aged meats, and many other products processed on site.
There are 14 people employed at the business, many of whom are family members. Zick is proud to have four generations of the Zick family working at the business.
Garry Zick is president of the company; his wife, Patricia, has done packaging for six years; his son, Garrett, is vice president; daughter Sarah Sprung, helps run the retail shop; daughter Katie Toney does the online orders; son-in-law and retired teacher Andy Sprung runs the shipping department; his sister, Debbie Schaffer, a retired postal worker, helps run the retail shop; grandchildren Eli Toney, packaging; Carter Sprung, sausage kitchen; Noah Toney, packaging; Finley Sprung, packaging; Aubrey Zick and Rosie Zick, miscellaneous; and the late Cole Toney used to do packaging, and Zick’s father’s mother, Clara, who is also deceased, used to do packaging.
Garry Zick’s late father, Harry, who was in a wheelchair the last 10 years of life, still came in every day to talk to customers and give him advice. His mom still gives him advice. “I am a 71-year-old kid,” he said, smiling.
Employees who are not relatives include Terry Lorenz, Jerky/Zick Sticks kitchen, 33 years, and he just retired this year; David Eichman, packaging, 43 years; Long Pham, packaging, 39 years and he had worked for Zick’s father Harry; Chris Blakeman, Jerky/Zicks Sticks kitchen, 31 years; Greg Wilson, Jerky/Zick Sticks kitchen, 10 years; Mike Medlin, Jerky/Zick Sticks kitchen, two years; Adam Poschke, packaging, five years; and retired teacher Patrick Veine, retail and sales, one year.
“My wife helped in the early years, but our goal was for her to stay at home with the kids,” he said. “She provides a lot of support for all of us. I met her at college–she is from western New York and we have been married for 48 years.”
He noted that over the years, the most significant incident was a fire that occurred in 1994 when a storm blew one of their smoke stacks off, but they worked through it and now have custom-made German smokehouses that are “very safe.”
Zick’s has accounts with several different businesses to produce their specialty sausages and smoked meats, and Zick Sticks. For example, his company started making products for Cabela’s in 1996, and his specialty meat products were sold in their stores for 20 years.
“That was a really good thing for our business and it gave us some notoriety as well,” he said. “We backed away from it when our snack food business kept growing, and our son, Garrett, entered the business after graduating from college, and then our two daughters, Sarah and Katie. All three of them are in it.”
Zick’s ships their products to distributors who place them in brick and mortar stores, but their products are also sold online through Amazon under their Buffalo Bob label.
“We are also in some stores in Michigan and Indiana, but our biggest market area is Tennessee, Texas, California, and Pennsylvania,” he said. “We also do private label work.”
Products sold under their name, Buffalo Bob, and Zick’s, are growing right now as they have a “clean” label. They are working with farmers who want to get their products marketed, animals that are raised on pastures and naturally raised–“it is a healthier breed of animals that these farmers are raising,” he said. “For example, we have worked with Jake’s Meats in Cassopolis for 20 years.”
The sausage, smoked meats, and Zick Stick business is growing as the company sells 130 different meat products including six kinds of bacon, 36 kinds of Zick Sticks, such as buffalo, elk, kangaroo, venison; 15 kinds of jerky, summer and hunter sausage, salami ribs, brisket, and charcuterie, including Italian salamis, pepperoni.
“We have a special room from Germany to dry the product for the charcuterie–it is a big thing with wineries and a European thing,” he said. “People want to eat the same things they had back home. We have one kitchen just for charcuterie, bacon and hot dogs. The other bigger kitchen is for the snack sticks and jerky, which is 80 percent of the business.”
“We make, on average, about 20,000 Zick Sticks a day–the business is growing like you can’t believe,” Zick said. “Each one weighs one ounce. We have four automated packaging machines and it takes two people to run a machine.”
Zick’s also takes deer meat brought in by hunters and makes it into Zick Sticks, salami and sausage for them.
He also supplies the sausage for the Berrien Springs-Oronoko Fire Department’s pancake and sausage breakfasts that are held a couple of times a year to raise money for rescue equipment for the department.
Zick’s is subject to USDA federal inspections daily, and it has been that way since 1986.
“We have to keep our facility spotless,” he said. “Products are tested for listeria, e-coli, and more.”.
“We have the best food safety program–the United States is ahead of the world,” he said. “Meat is the safest product produced to ship across the state line or to another business to be resold.”
“All our recipes have to be sent to Washington D.C. to be approved,” he added. “We have to get the labels approved, and the packaging has to meet all food grade specifications. All of the ingredients and spices have to meet the codes and the label has to reflect what you have in that product. They are strict with meat.”
Zick created a lot of the recipes used at his company, and learned a lot from Max Wolf, his apprenticeship experience as a youth that he built his business upon. Longtime employee Terry Lorenz developed some recipes as well. Zick’s son, Garrett, heads up the future of the research and development for their company.
Zick produces a consistent product through the use of two main items: First, quality raw materials (the meat); and secondly, the spices that he uses.
“The meat comes from here and different countries including New Zealand and Australia, and the spices come from all over the world,” he said.
He noted that Zick’s has a national base of customers and they only ship in the United States.
“There is so much business in this country–you just have to work a little bit,” he stated.
Zick enjoys watching his business continue to grow through the work of his family and their employees.
“What I have enjoyed the most is the people who have worked for us and who are working for us now–I enjoy teaching young people how to do work in the business, learn how to make sausage, learn all aspects of the business…to see where someone fits, see what they are good at and excel at…”
“Our kids went to Berrien Springs Public Schools and our grandkids are going there now,” he said. “It is a great community.”
When asked what is most challenging about the business, he hesitated because he truly enjoys what he does each day.
“I enjoy it so much, I really lucked out…liking what I started to do as a kid,” Zick said.
“The biggest challenge, however, is keeping up with regulations in producing a food product and my second biggest challenge is technology. My grandkids have a real handle on technology. I used to ask my kids, and now my kids ask their kids. The equipment is way beyond what I started out with; I have to embrace a certain level of it, but not all of it.”
He emphasized that what has been “most rewarding” has been watching his family grow up in the business.
“Even when my parents had the grocery store, me and my sisters gained skills, and knowledge of how to work with people, which has benefitted us in our careers,” he said. “Our parents were good role models.”
“Now we look to the future and we thank God for what He has done for us and the community through our enterprise,” Zick said. “He has sustained us through many ups and downs, and change, and we look forward to growing the business and sustaining through future generations.”
“We are thankful to be in this close-knit community,” he emphasized.
Zick’s Specialty Meats is open 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday-Friday, and 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. on Saturday.
