For three decades Tom Gross operated TJ’s Land Clearing, a company that opened ground for power lines and subdivisions throughout the state of Alaska, but in his heart, he always wanted to be a butcher and run a shop.

Then at the age of 58, his dream came true, and the owner of Tommy G’s Meat & Sausage opened its doors to a world-class “neighborhood” meat shop and Italian Grocery store in Fairbanks on July 4, 2021.

His story is almost like the fable of the amateur golfer who entered the U.S. Open and hit a hole-in-one on his first shot off the tee. More to the point, Tommy, as he likes to be called, went to the national convention of the American Association of Meat Processors (AAMP) in Des Moines, Iowa, in July, and entered a ham in the commercial class and earned a Grand Champion award in the American Cured Meat Championship held in conjunction with that event. Not a bad start, but was it luck or something else?

Student of game

His story starts when the former North Dakota native became interested in meat. His father was serving in the U.S. Air Force and stationed at Minot, ND. He was an avid hunter who knew how to process game animals to help feed his family of seven children.

“Dad did that kind of work and I helped eat the meat,” Tommy reminisced. “When I went hunting in Alaska while stationed in the U.S. Army, I shot my first caribou with a bow. I didn’t have a place to process it but found a young man with a mobile processing unit who agreed to take care of my kill. Then he got an emergency call from someone over 100 miles away who had taken a bison and needed help quickly since it wasn’t field dressed and when checked out, had souring down to the bone. It was loaded onto the same mobile processing unit as my caribou and ruined my meat.

“The operator said he would make it up by giving me a half beef to cover my loss. I told him that I did not need half a beef as I lived in the barracks but would take payment in education in meat cutting. He told me I had to learn to wrap meat properly and learn cuts before I could touch a knife.”

Fast-forward to March of 2021 when Gross undertook renovating a 4,500-square-foot area of a building he owned in Fairbanks. He had to redo the water and sewer lines and deal with other sanitation issues first. Then he called Jon Frohling, operator of Scott Pec Industries, who he purchased equipment from and gleaned knowledge in all things sausage. Frohling and Gross worked together to build a plant and shop layout designed for product flow.

Two weeks before opening, Frohling and Handtmann’s Jay Wenther, PhD, made the trip to Fairbanks to fabricate products and fill the cases for the grand opening. Together they trained Gross and his “right-hand man,” Benjamin Jamie Stewart.

“Jon gave us our recipes and formulations for most of our products,” he said. “I was lucky enough to find Jamie, a pipefitter who had a lot of on-call time available when he was not repairing or replacing heating systems in the sometimes minus 40-degree weather we experience here. Jamie was a stickler for details and took on the curing and smoking end of the business. I was content to cut meats. His title is right-hand man.”

Tom Gross has been operating Tommy G’s Meat & Sausage for over a year. (Source: Tommy G's Meat & Sausage Company)

 

Getting down to business

When the shop opened in July, it was a showpiece – 16-foot-high ceilings, special design and painting, open spaces, a window behind the 1,500-square-foot retail area where customers could see the meat cutters and processors at work, a full-service counter and merchandiser bins that displayed some of the most remarkable products. Above all, the cleanliness and transparency of the shop were unrivaled, said Mackenzie Smith of Mountain River Marketing, who runs all of Tommy G’s social media advertising and overall online presence. Smith also developed the new company’s website tommygsalaska.com. The company can be found on Instagram and Facebook under the handle @tommygsalaska for an impressive meat experience. Tommy and his staff also offer customers personalized cooking and buying advice in the shop.

While Tommy G’s has some grocery items and beverages imported from Italy and a few meat products they buy from other sources, the shop produces 50 meat items of its own. A peek at that list includes fresh brats, cotto salami, summer sausage, landjaeger, smoked sausage, kielbasa, jalapeno pepper jack snack sticks...you name it and it’s probably at Tommy G’s. They have roasted chicken and a topflight deli ham.

Still, it's the Certified Angus Beef that draws the most attention and volume. Purchased from the top CAB producers in the Upper Northwest, Tommy G’s features its CAB cuts, about 70% of which are graded Prime.

On top of that, the neighborhood shop brings in a few cases of Wagyu beef for a monthly Wagyu Wednesday sale which seems to always sell out.

That special someone

So, what makes this small shop with three employees plus Tommy and Jamie click on a pace with the world’s finest hometown butcher shops? Maybe we could look at the way the management seems to celebrate everything. The local brewery fashioned a special beer for the grand opening. There is free coffee for customers who donate to a local charity and a lucky child selected takes home a hat full of money.

Gross connected with local entrepreneur Teal Belz, owner of Golden Heart Performing Arts and Sunlight Farms. Belz was willing to step in and help Gross get the business up and running. Teal was instrumental in the upstart of the company. She helped with everything from the HACCP plan to designing special lettering for pricing labels and introducing Tommy to Logo Contest, a service he used to develop the Tommy G’s logo. No one is certain if there’s more than “meats” the eye going on in this exciting shop, but Tommy G’s encourages local business folks to work together.

Gross served as president of the Rotary Club of Fairbanks (2021-22). He believes that if you are going to live in a community you donate to that community. He donates to hockey and softball teams, community events, 4-H and many other worthy causes.

“My mother once told me you’ll never have a nickel in your pocket because you always give it away,” he said, laughing. “I should probably rein that in a bit, but we like to help our neighbors because we all depend on each other up here.”

It is his warm personality and genuine caring about others that makes him a standout. He offers this explanation:

“There is something special about food. When it is consumed at the dinner table with family, or even in the form of a snack stick, there is something about it that brings everyone closer together. It is our greatest expression of love, trust and intimacy, a sort of communion if you would.”

Gross may have a way with words, but he also has something special going with his voice. He’s a classically trained tenor who has performed with the local opera company, but has also sung in the British Isles, Portugal and even at the Vatican.

It’s not just the voice that makes him special, it’s the sacrifice he must make in practicing, abstaining from certain foods and even coffee around performance time. Putting it mildly, Tommy puts the same sacrifice and pursuit of perfection in his music as he does in his butcher shop.

Oh, and what was the thing that made his commercial ham a grand champion in its first outing? He used Frohling’s recipe but added 100% Alaska birch syrup to the cure. Teal Belz and her husband Nate produce the 100% birch syrup at their local Sunlight Farms. That special syrup also appears in a blueberry breakfast link sausage and their experimenting with a jalapeno pork jerky. Tommy G’s may soon be offering a 51% reindeer sausage and perhaps reindeer steaks as well.

In the year since Tommy G’s Meat & Sausage opened, they’ve expanded the retail shop by another 20 feet, but the dream has no limits. He has spared no expense in the design and build out of his operation – from equipment, ingredients, product quality and customer service for a reason special to him – the people of Fairbanks deserve it and the animals deserve it.