From Farm to Table: Inside Boulder Sausage’s Commitment to Ethical Sourcing, Safety, and Packaging Excellence

Fresher. Tastier. Better. Since Day One.

In the early 1900s, a German immigrant family in Racine, Wisconsin, started making sausage by hand.

Their son Don Olk carried that tradition west. In 1961, he and his wife, Frieda, settled in Boulder, Colorado, and opened Don's Cheese and Sausage Mart on Pearl Street. Fresh pork shoulder. Real spices. Nothing added that didn't belong there. The same ingredients we still use today.

That shop became a staple of Sunday afternoons and childhood memories for people across Boulder County. People who tried it once came back for more — and that's still the whole story.

When the business ran into trouble years later, Jim Burton took on what looked like a bankruptcy case and saw something worth saving: sausage that tasted genuinely better. He shifted the model from restaurant to manufacturing, started building relationships with grocery meat managers across Colorado's Front Range, and made one commitment that has defined everything since.

"It's very important that we do what we say, because we are authentic." — Jim Burton, CEO

The Flavor People Come Back For

Always fresh. Made in small batches, with a cold, careful process that protects the quality of the meat from the moment the pork arrives to the moment it hits the shelf. Never frozen. Fresh sausage simply cooks better, tastes better, and feels more satisfying on the plate.

Better pork.

When pork makes up 97% of what's in the casing, the quality of that pork matters more than anything else. We use 100% premium lean pork shoulder — nothing else comes close for flavor and texture.

Real ingredients. All-natural casings that give each link that distinctive snap on the first bite. No MSG, no nitrates or nitrites, no fillers, no added water, no artificial preservatives. Just fresh pork and real spices, made simply, because good ingredients don't need a lot of help.

People first. We're a Colorado company with real people behind the brand — a team that takes pride in the work and leadership that believes in doing things the right way. Quality matters here because people matter here.

What That Standard Produces

Bratwurst with the depth of a recipe refined across generations. Hatch Green Chile Bratwurst that captures the heat and earthiness of New Mexico chiles in a sausage built for Colorado grills. Breakfast links that taste the way breakfast sausage used to taste, before the industry decided cheap fillers were an acceptable trade-off. Chorizo bold enough to earn its place in a serious kitchen.

We're also bringing that same fresh, clean, better-pork standard into higher-welfare lines — including No Antibiotics Ever and Certified Humane products — for shoppers who want the same craveable flavor with even more to feel good about.

Why It Tastes So Good

In a food industry that's spent decades optimizing for shelf life, margins, and ingredient cost reduction, doing things the right way has become a competitive differentiator. We think it always was — we just never called it that. We called it Sunday dinner.

We're Colorado's #1 local sausage brand, operating out of Louisville since 1989, and every link we make still answers to the standard Don set when he first opened his doors on Pearl Street.

What retail partners trust about us is the same thing customers have trusted for over 60 years: we make what we say we make, with what we say is in it, the way we say it's made. That's not a marketing position — it's a family standard, carried forward by the people who've kept this company going ever since.

If you haven't tried Boulder Sausage, the store locator at bouldersausage.com will show you where to find us.

If you have, you already know what we're talking about!

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