In the wake of COVID-19, the restaurant industry has had to adapt overnight just to survive. Grab-and-go and takeout are two innovations that have been foundational to a restaurant’s success in the “new normal.” Diners have mobilized and the industry has mobilized with them.
At the forefront of this movement are innovative companies like Johnsonville. The family-run, Wisconsin business, supplying hungry patrons and businesses with sausage for over 75 years, has embraced the new fast-paced food culture and hopes to use its developments to help thousands of restaurants and distributors meet the rush of a semi-nomadic customer base while maintaining a high quality of food and service.
Increased demand for quick food and a decline of in-restaurant dining, paired with labor shortages, has made versatile, easy-to-prepare products a necessity for restaurants and distributors.
When the COVID-19 pandemic paralyzed business across the country, Johnsonville immediately reached out to its foodservice customers to support their changing needs. “We really took a step back and started talking to our customers and individual operators just to understand where their pain points are, and it really came down to speed of prep,” Johnsonville Senior Product Marketing Manager Craig Yoder said. “The faster and easier that you can get the product to the quality level that their customers are expecting, the better off everyone’s going to be.”
“With an arsenal of foodservice products and programs designed to help your business thrive,” Johnsonville hopes to do just that with a fresh, innovative line of Sausage Strips. Johnsonville crafted a new way to eat sausage that is versatile, fast, and delicious.
Johnsonville has been working on a way to deliver sausage flavor in a familiar bacon-like form and with increased demand on ease of prep and versatility, Sausage Strips came at the perfect time. “The flexibility that the sausage product brings is across all day parts and across all menu categories. We’ve developed recipes with our take on Cobb salads, on wraps, on breakfast sandwiches, on a protein on protein — so you put it on a burger,” Yoder said, “and it fits very nicely in that with the emphasis on grab-and-go and the ease of prep.”
Johnsonville designed its Sausage Strips with the specific needs of restaurants and operators in mind. “The versatility is incredible and the benefit to the operator is you can purchase this innovative product and you can put it across all your dayparts in your entire menu,” Yoder said. “And you’re not having to source three or four different SKUs to accomplish the same thing.”
The bacon-like shape and texture of Johnsonville’s Sausage Strips aims to appeal to a customer’s comfort. Johnsonville offers two flavors, Original and Chorizo, made from its premium line of sausage to make sure the ease and versatility of this new product is matched by quality.
Sausage Strips also appeal to the health-conscious consumer. “You look at Sausage Strips and there’s 40% less fat than bacon and 30% less sodium,” Yoder said. “So you can have that flavor, you can have that indulgence, and you can feel better about eating it.”
Johnsonville’s research and development team works to create the best packaging and holding methods in order to find the optimal solution. “We use the acronym H.I.C.S., highest impact on customer success, because anybody can sell a customer a sausage,” Yoder said. “What we want to do is help our customers grow. And when they grow, we grow.”
Operators and distributors can find additional information and request a sample for the new Johnsonville Sausage Strips and the entire Johnsonville foodservice line by visiting the Johnsonville website.
