Market Forces: Stefan and Sons

This week, Patch spoke with Mario Bochna of Stefan and Sons Meat Store in Clifton. Bochna and his wife, Lisa, sell pierogi, kielbasa, and stuffed cabbage from red coolers atop their market table as the sounds of an Andrea Bocelli CD drift from the open window of their nearby pickup. The stand is located on the side of the lot closest to Springfield Avenue.

Would you describe Stefan and Sons?

We are of course a family business. We’re an old-fashioned pork store, or butcher shop. We make our own products, anything from smoked hams to sausage, frankfurters, bratwurst, knockwurst. We have a baloney kitchen, a smokehouse, stuffer, cooker, processing equipment on premises.  We also have a full line of imported foods, a lot of homemade salads, and we’re like a butcher store, too – we sell pork, beef, chicken, veal.  We have a hot food bar where you can get an entrée with two or three side dishes, anything from chicken marsala to cured ham hocks to a pork cutlet. The menu changes every day; that’s very popular around lunchtime.  

What do you like best about what you do?

I’m not working for anybody. Tell you a quick story. I’ve been with Stefan and Sons since I’ve been out of college, for twenty-some odd years. About three, four years ago, I’m saying, there’s got to be something different. So I left the family business. And I worked for a food distributor – sorry, I get emotional – you know, I thought that’s what I wanted. It’s just different stresses, different pressures. My wife and I came up with this idea (to sell the family products at farmer’s markets) so while I was working (at the distributor), we did a couple of farmer’s markets up in Montclair and Summit, and it became really, really successful. So I left (that job) about a year ago, and it’s working out really, really, really well. What I like about it is just being out here. You’re working for yourself. You meet really nice people. I’m still involved in the shop – I do their books for them, I help buying some of the stuff, and we have an agreement that I do this for them, too.

Why does talking about that make you emotional?  

Because it’s something that I really want to do. You know, you try to search for something that you want to do, and I like what I’m doing. This is – whatever you want to call it – if I’m searching, how would you describe it, you’re – this is my love, my passion. You’re involved in a business -  it’s your own. This is something that my wife and I created both, you know, it’s sort of an offshoot off the store, and we don’t have anybody dictating to us what we can do. We decide on our own. Why I get emotional, I don’ t know. I have three daughters, so I’m an emotional kind of guy. They make fun of me when I watch movies: “Oh, Pop’s crying.”  

Could you talk about some of the differences between working at a food distribution company and a farmer’s market or local Mom-and-Pop business?  

I’m a simple kind of guy. I thought, you know, you bought items, you keep the warehouse stocked for the salespeople to sell the product. The position that I had was I was a product manager/beef buyer. You can never run out, but you’ve always got to be priced right. If you’re not priced right…let’s put it this way: the decisions in a small business, you get a faster reaction time than you would in a bigger business.

(For food distribution companies) there’s a lot of competition involved selling the same item. Example: rib-eyes. It’s a prime rib steak; boneless rib-eyes. If I’m buying them two weeks out because I need a whole truckload, and I’m buying at a certain price - let’s say a high price - but the market falls a week later but I’m not getting my product until a week after that because I ordered it, then you’re kind of stuck with it, because people can’t sell it because there’s competition selling the same product. It’s not like kielbasa. I’m selling a unique niche product - not everybody makes the kielbasa the way we do. We get a lot of compliments on our stuffed cabbage. The reaction time, you know in a smaller business, you can make the decision really quick, especially if you own it and you run it. With a bigger company, you’ve got to get the OKs from your directors. Sometimes you can make the decision yourself, but on big purchases, you’ve got to go up the ladder. It’s just a different animal.

 How did you get into the kielbasa business?

We’re from Poland. We came here in 1967. My grandparents were here and they brought us over here. Back when they weren’t letting anybody through the Communist countries, somehow or other we lucked out and we got here.

 I’m one of the sons. In 1981, believe it or not, my father got fired from his job. It was a traumatic time in his life. He ended up working for Thumann’s meats - Thumann’s cold cuts, I’m sure you’ve heard of them. My mother and father decided that they were going to look for a business. Everybody put their money together and we were looking for a business. They went to this one butcher that they knew, and they said listen, do you have any machinery or slicers because we want to open up a Polish delicatessen or a pork store. The guy said why do you want to do that, why don’t you buy this one? Back then it was known as Hauser’s Pork Store in Clifton. The store’s got a really long history…close to 100 years. Now it’s Stefan and Sons Meat Store. It’s over 25 years, since 1982.

I learned basically everything from my father. I was going to college and worked there part time on the weekends, shuffled between school and work, graduated college – Montclair State College back then - and ended up in the business; ended up running the business: everything from buying to manufacturing to customer service. Jack of all trades, master of none, you know.

How do you make the kielbasa?

We primarily use pork, so we get boxes of pork - lean meat - and we blend it together with beef. First the meat comes out of the box and it gets ground into the consistency that we need. We weigh it all out and then it gets put into a mixer. The seasoning is put while the meat is mixing. It has to have a certain consistency - stickiness and tackiness - so it binds and holds together. It moves from the mixer into what’s called a truck on wheels – not a vehicle or anything like that, it’s just a truck that holds meat and it gets moved over the stuffer. The stuffing machine stuffs the casing and there’s one or two people operating the casing and they make different sizes and lengths. We make it in pairs; we make it in circles; we make it in links. And then it gets put on a smoke stick and then it goes into an old-fashioned smokehouse, which is basically a pit. What we use is mostly fruitwood such as apple or cherry wood, and it generates the heat and it’s also smoking the kielbasa so that when it comes out of the smoke house it’s fully cooked.  

How often do you eat kielbasa or the other products that you make?  

Believe it or not, quite often. Every weekend I say to myself, I’m not going to eat kielbasa anymore, but then, you  know, the smells take over. You know, you get hungry and you start eating. Everything from head cheese – I don’t know if you know what head cheese is – to pig’s feet in gelatin; a lot of ethnic stuff that other people might not eat, I eat. Like tripe soup, we make a really good tripe soup. So quite often I eat what we make.

What’s your typical week like?

My family makes the product for me. I pick the stuff up on Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and we go to different markets. I’m outside – most of the time I’m not in the store. If anything I’m in the store loading up and packing up, just organizing everything for the next day. I tell them what I need on Monday and my mother goes with her crew, and she makes the stuff for me, and my brother delegates to the guys in the back what to make for me and then it gets all packed and I more or less count, pick, stuff like that.

On Fridays I’m at Rutgers at the Rutgers Gardens. We’re also in Little Falls – it’s the second year, they’re trying to get it started. On Saturdays we’re in Montclair and Boonton, and we finish off the weekend in Summit. So that’s my work week.

What do you sell at the Summit Market and what’s your best-seller?

The things that we sell here are what my wife and I feel are things that people will recognize. Example: pierogi. More or less, 80 percent of the people know what pierogi are: it’s a Polish version of a ravioli except we stuff ours with potato or sauerkraut. The pierogi, that’s a good vegetarian thing - a lot of people, they walk by here, they see meat. We also bring stuffed cabbage, kielbasa, and a snack stick. That more or less sells by itself.  All three, the pierogi, the stufffed cabbage and the kielbasi are really popular items.