Jeremy Schaller

History of his grandfather and how the company developed

My grandfather came here, an immigrant. A little bit of his background: After World War I, he was a butcher’s apprentice in Stuttgart and then in Alsace-Lorraine. He learned from a very good butcher there in Stuttgart. And after that, he knew the trade, so he went up to Hamburg, worked as a cook on a boat, came across the Atlantic, thought that New York was where he wanted to be, and, as he used to say, he jumped the ship. So, he walked off the ship, walked away from his job, never came back. He had $10 in his pocket and the rest is history. He first worked with another butcher, on 89th Street and First. It didn’t take off and then Mr. Weber told him that his location was wrong, and he came over here and he said, “Be my partner, and we’ll open up Schaller & Weber.” Because he saw that my grandfather was making an amazing product on First Avenue but it just wasn’t the right location. So, they opened up on 86th and Second and they had almost instant popularity in the community. They just made such a good product that people came to them. This place had a lot of other butchers around the area, but people found his [products] to be the best. So, first [the shop] was much more narrow, and then he doubled it, put in some more walk-in boxes. This area right here – I’m sorry for the people who can’t see it – but we’re in the basement actually right now and that used to be the actual smokehouse back in the day. And then in the late 1950s, early ’60s, he started building the factory in Queens, and that’s when all the production of our sausages and all the other products that we make started to move out there. He actually had about six Schaller & Weber stores in the area, but then he needed more investment to build the factory and keep it running, so they sold off the stores and focused on wholesale.