“That is our greatest uncertainty,” he continues. “People who do not know our business are making decisions that affect us tremendously. “It’s our thinking that more investment into automated grinding, mixing and batch processing is the way to go, but we have to be very cautious in spending when we do not have consistency in the regulatory areas,” he adds. We have grown to three Multivac machines and are looking at a fourth. In the mid-‘80s, we went from tray wrapping to 100 percent vacuum packing. We have invested in equipment to automate our operations. About 90 percent of our workers have been with us for over 10 years and 30 of them have been here for 20 years or more. “We just don’t know what’s coming down the pike from government and the regulatory agencies,” he confides. Frank says Zummo would like to expand further east, heavier into Mississippi as well as Alabama and Florida, but says it will be a cautious and steady growth. Today, the Zummo enterprise has nearly 70 employees and experienced a 10 percent growth rate for each of the past five years. Smoked sausage in a variety of flavors has helped spread the firm’s fame throughout the region. a week, not far behind the smoked sausage level of 150,000 lbs. Boudain was added in 1995 and has grown to a volume of 80,000 lbs. In 1985, the Zummo family gave up hog slaughter and 10 years later quit their cattle kill to focus exclusively on processed meats. “We may have tweaked it a bit, but it’s still the genuine Cajun taste.” “There is a very strong Cajun influence in our Golden Triangle area and we used Grandfather’s original smoked sausage recipes that he acquired in New Orleans,” Frank explains. But the big year was 1961 when a new $500,000 plant was constructed, tripling capacity to 5,000 cattle and 2,000 hogs per month. They purchased that facility from the city in 1948 and remodeled it four years later to include a smokehouse, sausage and sales rooms. In 1925, the Zummo Packing Company was built in Beaumont and within seven years the family moved activities to the city abattoir. Eleven years later, a fire destroyed the business, but he rebuilt and grew it to a two-horse wagon meat company. In 1919, his Zummo Meat Packers was a one-horse-wagon operation, located in part of a cold-storage building. Imagine, he knew no one here when he arrived but had the fortitude to build the operation.” Within a few years he brought a few cousins from Sicily to help run the business. He ran it for nearly eight years and began slaughtering. “He worked about 12 to 14 hours a day learning the trade,” Frank says, “and later established his own butcher shop in Beaumont, about 40 miles west of the Louisiana border in the heart of Texas oil country.
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