There are special times and milestones in the history of a family owned-and-operated meat processing company. Those times include the first day they opened, the first-year anniversary of the business, the first 20 years in business and the time most revered, when a family business enlists a new generation of family to the enterprise.

For Polidori Sausage in Denver, Colo., that special celebration arrives in August 2025 when this former small grocery and butcher shop can tout its five generations of family ownership when it celebrates its 100th anniversary.

“It’s the original Italian sausage recipe from Anna and Rocco Polidori, the same pork shoulder, salt and spices with nothing changed except maybe the larger batch sizes,” said Melodie Polidori Harris, who wears the title of chief sausage officer. It is her son William Polidori Harris, the fifth-year purchasing manager and sales department leader who represents that fifth generation in the family.

Company president Steven Polidori said everyone on the team of 34 employees remains true to their six pillars of strength that have sustained and grown the family business into one of the most trusted and revered sausage companies in the nation. Those pillars are defined as quality, teamwork, consistency, service, ethics and price.

“Those are the real values we put forth and live by and they have sustained and grown our company,” he said. “We now sell our product in 25 states, and we expect to be marketing our product in many more very soon.”

Portfolio expansion

That original sausage has grown into an array of products rooted in the first Polidori shop that former coal miner Rocco Polidori built in 1925 as a grocery store and butcher shop and six months later had to expand into a larger facility due to customer demand.

Today the 15,000-square-foot facility cranks out more than 80,000 lbs of sausage weekly in flavor profiles ranging from the original, a mild and a hot Italian flavor, as well as breakfast sausage, bratwursts, andouille, beer brats and chorizo. Many of their sausage specialty items are offered in patties as well as in link format. They’ve gone to offer meatballs and ground or smaller portioned sausages as ingredients for meals like chorizo potato soup and fresh Hatch green chili peppers and cheese. They also offer recipes and ideas for other meals using their meats as ingredients. The company produces ingredients for other manufacturers for use in burritos, meatball sandwiches and empanadas.

Most of those recipes can be found on their website, polidorisausage.com. Direct retail sales within grocery stores drive about 20% of their annual sales.

E-commerce represents only a small percentage of sales but represents the convenience of customers being able to buy their items no matter where they live in North America. The company does not co-manufacture for other firms that want to private label their sausage items under their own name, but it does make meat ingredients for other companies making burritos and meatball sandwiches.

Melodie Polidori Harris, vice president and chief sausage officer, is adamant that the family stands by its time-honored tradition of using clean ingredients and no derivatives in their products. They source their pork from multiple sustainable suppliers from around the country.

That fact is important considering that Polidori Sausage does not sell to the public directly in a retail setting. They sell to supermarkets like King Soopers, City Market and Safeway. Much of the sales volume comes through seven distributors such as Sysco, US Foods and others.

Polidori sells premium sausage from specially designed 100th anniversary vendor carts.

| Source: Polidori Sausage

The family company is adamant about their sustainability footprint through reusing, reducing and recycling its production and packaging and shipping materials.

Put it this way: their product is original, as is their marketing, meaning they don’t use co-packers, explaining that they prefer to keep the larger customers for their plant efficiency.

And the company is quick to innovate when the time is right. For example, when poultry-based sausage came into vogue about five years ago, Polidori was able to develop seven different chicken sausage flavors for customers to choose from.

Hometown history

Another major segment for the company has been sports venues. Polidori’s goal is to be recognized as “the hometown sausage” throughout Colorado. That’s a message they’ve relayed well in enticing sports fans who try their products at stadiums or arenas into looking for that same taste when they get home and head to their local supermarket to shop for their sausages and other meat items.

Among their most successful sports venues for sales are Coors Field, home of Major League Baseball’s Colorado Rockies, and Ball Arena, the home ice arena for the National Hockey League’s Colorado Avalanche, which won the Stanley Cup in 2022. Vendors selling their products can also be found at the National Basketball Association’s Denver Nuggets home games. They also are readily available at the University of Denver where Pioneers golf, baseball and soccer fans come to root for their teams.

Polidori not only has its products at serve-and-go stands, but also at some specially designed 100th anniversary vendor carts and for those venues where sausages are sold directly to fans sitting in the stands. Their newly designed logo helps celebrate the coming anniversary.

This is a family meat processor that even boasts its own mascot, aptly named Louie the Link. The sausage costumed mascot was named after Melodie and Steven’s grandfather Louie Polidori.

“You know to think about being part of a family business that has offered the same quality product for 100 years is amazing,” Steven Polidori said. “It means people you never met trusted your family to make their sausage for decades, and they are trusting us today with the loyalty of their relatives. That is an honor that we feel so strongly about that it’s hard to put into words.”

The mascot and the family values that Polidori Sausage displays don’t just extend to sports facilities. You are likely to see that special character appearing at the Colorado Pork Producers Cooking Competition, at Polidori-sponsored golf tournaments, at open houses for their customers, or for their customer representatives, their company drivers — you name it, they do it.

Some might call it speaking with your heart to show you are a part of the community; others would call it showing that you have a heart to share.

As the Polidori motto says, “Large Enough to Handle, Small Enough to Care.” It makes one wonder what the firm will do on that special anniversary date in August. Probably the same thing they’ve been doing for the past 100 years: making new customers into believers of the folks who make their meat products for them just as they would for their own family.