The ‘best dern sausage’ around is made right here in Alabama

As a budding young attorney not long out of law school, Monroe County native David Steele got a job with a big law firm in Birmingham.

One day in court, the judge discovered he was from Monroe County and started quizzing Steele about the hickory-smoked sausage that only a few folks outside of Monroeville knew anything about.

“So, you’re from Monroe County?” the judge said.

“Yes, sir, judge,” Steele replied.

“You know about that sausage, right?’” the judge continued.

“Yes, sir,” Steele responded. “I know about that sausage.”

“When are you going back home?”

“I’m going this weekend.”

“Can you bring me back 10 pounds next week?” the judge asked.

“Yes, sir, judge,” Steele said. “I certainly will.”

So, on his trip home to Monroe County that weekend, Steele bought a 10-pound box of Monroeville Brand Sausage and brought it back to Birmingham to deliver to the judge, as promised.

That was nearly 40 years, ago, and Steele had no clue then that decades later, he would not only still be delivering Monroe County sausage to folks all over Alabama but that he would also be running the company that makes it.

“(The judge) seemed to care a whole lot more about that sausage than he did my budding legal career,” Steele recalls over a breakfast of his Monroe Sausage and Monroe Bacon at Gilbert’s Country Market in his hometown of Beatrice.

“Maybe he knew something then that I didn’t know -- that I was going to wind up much more involved with the sausage than I ever dreamed.”

Steele, who has a law practice in Monroeville and whose family runs a timberland-management business in Beatrice, only got into the meat business in the first place because his family missed having the sausage they grew up with and wanted to bring it back.

“It was the sausage that everybody around home ate,” he says. “What I remember most vividly was the stores would get the sausage in a 10-pound, white, cardboard box.

“You would go to the store, and they would have those boxes just sitting out on the counter. They would weigh it out on the scale, and you would buy it buy the pound. That was the sausage that everybody ate.”

After a hurricane shut down the business for about three years in the mid-2000s, though, Steele and his family have slowly put Monroe Sausage back on the map, carving out their own little niche in a market dominated by their next-door neighbor in Conecuh County.

Among their biggest ambassadors are Bass Anglers Sportsman Society (B.A.S.S.) founder Ray Scott, who has his own “Scott Hot” Monroe Sausage blend, and North Carolina chef Eric Gephart, the director of culinary inspiration for Kamado Joe ceramic grills and a huge fan of both Monroe Sausage and Monroe Bacon.

Scott picked up some Monroe Sausage while passing through Beatrice about a dozen years ago and subsequently offered to lend his name to support the brand.

“Not long after that, he called me up one day and said, ‘Hey, I really want to do something to help y’all out,’” Steele says. “’You can use my name and whatever.’

“The only thing he ever expected in return monetarily was if he called me up and needed some sausage or bacon, then, by golly, I sent it to him.”

Gephart, meanwhile, met Steele and first tasted his Monroe Sausage at an event in Orange Beach about five years ago, and he has been cooking with it ever since.

“He’s got the best dern sausage I’ve ever had,” Gephart says. “My wife will not eat any other sausage. My kids won’t eat any other sausage.”

‘Jimmy’s sausage’

The story of Monroe Sausage begins in 1952, when partners Bill Causey and Jimmy McMillan bought the Monroe Meats & Cold Storage butcher shop in downtown Monroeville. Causey was the butcher, and McMillan worked the front counter.

For the next several years, Causey and McMillan experimented with different spices and seasonings until, in 1959, they hit on the blend that is still used to make the sausage today.

That’s why the label on a package of Monroe Sausage says, “Original Southern Recipe Since 1959.”

“That’s when Monroe Sausage as we know today was born,” Steele says. “Up until then, they were still tinkering around with the different spice blends until they got it to the way that it is today.”

Although it was available only in and around Monroeville at the time, folks passing through town would load up their ice chests with the Monroe County sausage to take home with them, helping spread the word about the small-town sausage with the big-time flavor.

“At that time, it was called Monroeville Brand Sausage,” Steele says. “But all the people referred to it as ‘Jimmy’s Sausage’ because he (Jimmy McMillan) was the guy you always dealt with.

“Hardly anybody that I knew growing up ever referred to it as Monroe Sausage or Monroeville Sausage,” he adds. “They would just say, ‘I need two pounds of Jimmy’s sausage.’ That was the deal.”

Many years later, after the business had moved out of Monroeville and into a rural part of the county, the Monroeville Brand Sausage processing facility was destroyed when Hurricane Ivan swept through the state in 2004, and the company stopped making sausage.

That’s when the Steele family -- David and younger brother, Hines Steele; their father, Jerry Steele; and their cousin Hudson Hines -- came to the rescue.

“We were up at our timber office, sitting around drinking a cup of coffee,” David Steele recalls. “And our dad, who was alive at the time, said, ‘What is going on with the Monroeville sausage? I’m having to eat this other stuff, it’s greasy, and I don’t like it.’’'

They tracked down Jeff Kirchharr, who had worked with McMillan and Causey for many years and later bought the business and the secret recipe from them.

The Steeles made a deal with Kirchharr to buy the Monroeville Brand Sausage company, and they rebranded it as the Monroe Meat Co. They hired Kirchharr to stay on and manage it.

They built a small production facility on Alabama 21 in Beatrice and started making their first sausage in 2007, roughly three years after Ivan blew through town.

“We were thinking this was a great opportunity to provide some jobs and do something positive for the community,” Steele says. “That was the plan from the beginning.”

‘A renewed energy’

While they may know a lot about managing timberland, though, the Steele family found out fast that they had a lot to learn about running a sausage company.

“(Being) totally forthright, we did not have enough knowledge about the meat business,” Steele says. “We struggled mightily.

“We would try this approach, try this food broker,” he adds. “Something would work for a while but never really worked particularly well (long-term). Basically, about 10 years into this adventure, in 2016, we were debating, ‘Do we even continue to operate?’”

Since Beatrice is in the thick of prime deer-hunting country, though, the Monroe Meat Co. opened a separate venison-processing facility that helped sustain their business during deer season.

Gradually, Steele says, they began to grow their customer base.

“Nothing grandiose and overwhelming,” he says, “but clearly some good things were kind of happening.”

Kirchharr later left the company to pastor a church, and Dustin Kilgore, a former Monroeville firefighter who had learned the ropes from Kirchharr, became the production manager.

Piggly Wiggly and Associated Grocers warehouses picked up Monroe Sausage and began providing it to their stores around the state. Rouses Markets -- which has locations in Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama -- also came on board.

“From that point, it’s just been a steady improvement,” Steele says. “And quite honestly, we’ve sort of got a renewed energy.

“I mean, three years ago, in the spring of ‘18, we were talking about shutting down,” he adds. “Three years later, our sales are six, seven, eight times what they were in 2018.”

Monroe Meat Co. introduced thick-cut Monroe Bacon to its product line four years ago. The bacon, unlike the sausage, is processed by a co-packer in Indiana and delivered to Beatrice for distribution under the Monroe Bacon label.

“The bacon has been a huge driver of our growth,” Steele says. “There are places that we’ve gotten our foot in the door with the bacon, and then the sausage followed.”

‘An easy choice to switch’

A town of 204 people, Beatrice is the western link of the South Alabama Sausage Belt, an 80-some-odd-mile stretch of highway that also includes Kelley Foods Sausage in Elba, Snowden’s Sausage in Andalusia and mighty Conecuh Sausage in Evergreen.

“Of course, Conecuh is so much larger and has so much more market share,” Steele says. “But it is pretty neat when you think about these four companies and all that they’re doing.

“I’m sure, if I saw the actual numbers, we’re probably fourth out of the four, but that just makes us want to work that much harder and be much more devoted to what we’re about.”

While Conecuh Sausage may have its own fan club and gift shop, Monroe Sausage has its loyal supporters, too.

Joey Sanders, who grew up in Greenville, in bordering Butler County, first picked up a package of Monroe Sausage about 20 years ago and still buys it whenever he passes through Monroe County.

For fun one weekend, Sanders fired up the grill and enlisted his family to take part in an unofficial blind taste test featuring all four South Alabama sausage brands -- Conecuh, Monroe, Snowden and Kelley Foods.

“We all thought Monroe was better,” he says. “And the others are great. Taken alone, we all enjoy any of them, but when I see a pack of (Monroe Sausage), I pick it up.”

Brody Olive, the executive chef at Perdido Beach Resort in Orange Beach, uses Monroe Sausage and Monroe Bacon in several dishes at the resort’s Latitudes 30 restaurant, including the chicken-and-sausage gumbo and the breakfast BLT.

Olive was introduced to the Monroe brand through a chef friend about five years ago, he says.

“I was actively searching for a new bacon and sausage, as well, for the hotel,” Olive says. “David got us some product in, and it was an easy choice to switch over from what we were doing.

“Also, it’s an hour and a half from here, so why wouldn’t we be showcasing it?”

‘The best sausage out there’

Gephart, the Kamado Joe chef, has helped spread the gospel of Monroe Sausage far beyond Alabama on his social media platforms, featuring it in such recipes as Fettucine Alfredo with Monroe Sausage and Roasted Oysters with Monroe Sausage and Smoked Gouda, among others.

“The sky’s the limit,” Gephart says. “So, it’s not just for breakfast anymore, you could say.”

Gephart, who says he doesn’t cook with any other smoked sausage, also uses Monroe Meat Co. products at cooking events around the country.

“I told David (Steele): ‘No strings attached, no dog in this fight -- you’ve got the best sausage out there. I would love to showcase your sausage at my live fire events,’” Gephart says.

“So, David has been very generous and come out and cooked with me and handed (sausage) out,” he adds. “I’ve been able to use David’s sausage and bacon at many of our parties around the United States.”

Every few weeks, Gephart receives a Monroe Meat Co. care package at his home in Hillsborough, N.C.

In addition to a few packs of sausage and bacon, Steele always includes a little hometown news from Beatrice.

“Every single time I get a box from David -- and I got one today -- I open it up and I get the town newsletter,” Gephart says. “I get the church bulletin. I get a couple of sheets of information about their product, but more importantly, I love the local touch of getting the outdoor guide

“He’s trying to get me down there to do some turkey hunting and deer hunting,” Gephart adds. “I need to get down. I keep telling him I’m coming. When I get down there, I’ll feel like I know half the town.”

To find out more about Monroe Sausage and Monroe Bacon, go here.

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