“What Time Is It?”

Every family business has a few legends, and ours begins with my grandfather, Karl Perl — the original sausageman. Long before the phrase “farm-to-table” was a trend, Karl was living it every day, crafting sausage from animals raised on the family farm and selling it directly to the factory workers who fueled America’s industrial heart.

 

Picture it: a bustling factory floor in the Midwest, workers on break, lunch pails in hand. Karl would stride in with his sausage, the aroma of hardwood smoke and spice trailing behind him. He didn’t need fancy packaging or slick marketing — just the sausage itself and a grin that said, “You’re about to eat something real.”

 

Of course, there was always the same question:

“Karl, how fresh is the sausage?”

And Karl, without missing a beat, would grab the worker’s arm, look at their wristwatch, and say with a wink:

“What time is it?”

 

Because to Karl, freshness wasn’t something you measured in days or weeks — it was measured in hours. His sausage was made so close to the moment you bought it that the best way to tell how fresh it was… was simply to check the clock.

 

That was Karl’s way of reminding people that the sausage they were eating came straight from the farm, made by hand, with no shortcuts. It was personal. It was honest. And it was fresh — always fresh.

 

Today, at Farmers Market Foods, we carry that same spirit forward. We may sell online instead of at the factory gate, and our clean label standards now proudly declare “no nitrates, no nitrites, no MSG.” But the heart of it is still Karl’s — food made with integrity, and a connection to both the farm and the families who enjoy it.

 

So the next time you ask how fresh our sausage is, we might just have to say…

“What time is it?”