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A Franklin business has won two medals at The Dunninghams Great New Zealand Sausage Competition in early October.
Judges awarded Jim and Louise Foote, owners of Taylor Road Meats in Karaka, a gold medal for their gourmet beef sausage (merlot and cracked pepper) and a bronze medal for their continental ready-to-eat (beef salami).
“We entered last year and got some great feedback; we took that all on board and came away with a couple of awards this year,” Jim said
“You get told that you’ve won an award, but not what you’ve won, so you turn up, and the third one that came out was our salami. Dylan Thompson, our butcher, makes this, and he’s an absolute champion.
“It (the salami) gets great feedback from our customers, so we thought it’d be a great one to enter, and when we got a bronze medal, we were over the moon. Then later, we learned our Merlot and cracked pepper managed to get a gold.
“It’s recognition that we’re going in the right direction, with the hard work we put in, and it reconfirms what people say about our product. It’s a great achievement for a small business,” said Jim.
According to Jim, the secret is less is more: using only good-quality beef and letting their master butcher do the rest.
Taylor Road Meats started three years ago to complement the couple’s farming work, with their slogan being “from our paddock to your plate.”
“You just can’t beat it, meat directly off the farm, you know exactly where it comes from, and what goes into it.
“The care taken with the animals once they’ve been slaughtered, we own our own processing place, so we’re in control the whole way through. Louise packs everything herself; she takes great pride in that, and we personally deliver it as well.”
“It’s literally coming from our farm; we cut out the middlemen and all the reasons where something could go wrong,” said Jim.
The Footes also have a dairy farming business, milking 550 cows and running a small flock of sheep.
