Days into the March coronavirus shut-down, Red Table Meat Co. owner Mike Phillips saw two-thirds of his orders vanish and knew he had to lay off his whole staff. His nationally recognized, award-winning hams, salamis, and other Italian-style cured pork products mainly shipped to restaurants and retail, and everything was suddenly shut down. Phillips walked through his Northeast Minneapolis room-sized coolers, the ones hanging with salamis as fat and numerous as ears of corn in an autumn cornfield, and thought: All this perishable inventory, all the money I spent buying pigs to create everything I see—what now?
It was a blow he couldn’t entirely get his head around. After founding the farm-to-charcuterie concept in 2014, Phillips had overcome one enormous logistical hurdle after another. Like climbing every mountain of money and paperwork to become an official USDA meat processor. Like fighting the war against American food safety customs of super-salt, super-acid, or super-preservative soaking that have made American salumi such a lesser category than Italian salumi. (Phillips uses the term salumi, as it seems to capture the category of various cured meats, including different larger whole-muscle cuts like speck.) Lately, things had been on the right track with national awards and strong distribution in New York City and California. But then when the pandemic hit, he had to scratch his spring sales trip throughout America’s southeast off his calendar and lay off his crew of some of America’s best salumi makers, leaving him rattling around his packed larder.
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