The Butchery’s Organic, Fresh Sausages Bring the Flavors of Their Travels to Your Home
Post credits to Pepper.
Jessica Gallegos and husband Kiko Dy are not your ordinary travelers—instead of eating corner pretzels and taking a photo with the Statue of Liberty when visiting New York City, they decided to take a sausage-making workshop in the Big Apple. In fact, they tell us, they love to do cooking workshops whenever they visit a new country [like when they visited Bali and did a traditional Balinese cooking class], not with the aim of starting a business but for the mere joy of learning something cultural while doing something fun. They instantly took to sausage-making, which became a hobby when they returned to the Philippines, and eventually, into a business.
“We started with 7 flavors and now we have 12,” explains Gallegos, who tells us that every Butchery meat product in the store was something she designed personally. From sausages, they expanded their offerings to include chicken nuggets, pork nuggets, and gluten-free chicken popcorn. “It’s a really big hit with moms and kids . . . and we make [organic] barbecue sauce [to go with it].” They also serve chicken wings, breakfast meats like their bestselling adobo flakes and caseless chicken inasal (which they compare to longganisa hubad in texture), ihaw, all of which are proudly local and organic.
“No chemicals, no artificial ingredients, no extenders—which is the most important thing—and nothing mysterious,” says Gallegos, proudly. “A lot of sausages have ‘mystery meat,’ which would mostly be like ground bones, scraps, whatever [is leftover from] their meat.” But you will find nothing mysterious about The Butchery’s carefully designed sausages, that Gallegos says moms and kids especially love. “Our sausages are very straightforward. It’s just 100% organic meat, herbs and spices. That’s it. Nothing else.”
“Our flavors are actually also good for you. Like mint and tarragon are good for your digestive system,” Gallegos explains. And all of the flavoring comes from the fresh herbs and spices, she clarifies, not from powdered versions, concentrates, and the like. And since moms love to feed The Butchery sausages to their kids, Gallegos tells us the sausages are a great vessel for sneaking in some greens into your young ones’ diets, which are incorporated into the meats. “It’s a healthier alternative to feed your family. Actually, our philosophy is that healthy should be delicious. Most people think that healthy food is bland. For us, healthy should be delicious also.”
After distributing their products through other local organic stores for several years, they finally decided to open up their very own brick-and-mortar where they not only can distribute their frozen products but also serve them cooked, and test out new innovations before they distribute them to their partner stores around the country. Their quaint store designed in monochrome colors looks like it belongs in a corner of New York City, where The Butchery could be said to have been born. Since opening The Butchery’s shop last January, they have since partnered up with Teraoka Farm to distribute their organically-grown produce at the store, as well as other local, organic products from Dy’s province of Isabela.
Aside from the shop serving as a deli and restaurant for The Butchery, it will also serve as a classroom for Gallegos to teach others how to make their own sausages at home, bringing The Butchery’s story full circle. More than wanting to share their healthy, homemade products, the couple wants “healthy” to be accessible to everyone and anyone, regardless of budget. While they continually strive to make their prices more competitive while maintaining the high quality for which they are known, the sausage-making classes will give everyone a chance to have a taste of The Butchery’s healthy-and-tasty philosophy whenever they want, at the convenience of their own home.