В Саскатуне открылся первый магазин Smokehaus Meats с фермерским мясом и деликатесами

Businesses and non-profit organizations regularly open and move in Saskatoon. Today, the StarPhoenix speaks with Trent Ens, who together with his wife Tanya and four other partners, opened the first Smokehaus Meats location in Saskatoon, in the Evergreen Crossing area in June. Trent and Tanya originally opened Smokehaus Meats in Martensville 20 years ago, a location they continue to operate along with a meat processing plant they opened about nine years ago. The pair, along with four other business partners, were looking to expand their meat and deli shop and saw this as an ideal time to open in Saskatoon with the ability to provide fresh meat and a huge variety of different products. They offer beef, pork, chicken and other products, including made-to-order and ready-to-pickup sandwiches, pizzas, salads and meat trays. Q: What got you into the meat business? A: I had worked with a fair amount of meat growing up. I grew up on a farm near Langham. And Tanya is from a farm near Cudworth. It was just something I enjoyed, and her and I wanted to be in business together. So this became a way to do it. My wife and I had sold our meat business in Swift Current (over 20 years ago) before opening in Martensville. Then we wanted to move back home. So we thought that would be a great chance to move back before our kids started school. Q: Why did you open in Saskatoon now? A: We were at a state where we just felt we were ready for some growth. The Martensville store was doing really well. Lots of sales. Lots of customers. And we had previously to that, about nine years ago, built a primary processing plant — a slaughter plant. We built out on our acreage just north of Martensville, and we have lots of capacity there. Once we got the plant running right and figured out what the capacity was, we realized that we had some unused capacity. Then we thought that since we have a great product line and we have lots of great products, we should probably bring that to the city and do up a store in Saskatoon. Q: What sets Smokehaus Meats apart? A: Freshness would definitely be one thing. For grocery stores, it is impossible for them to compete with us on freshness, because they don’t do their own products. What we do is because we have our plant we process cattle and hogs weekly. And then we take the meat into our stores, and we make our jerky and bacon and ham and sausage and everything. They are all fresh cut. Because grocery stores have a whole warehousing system and they need somebody else to do their primary processing for them and so on, it’s not possible for that kind of system to put out really fresh product like we do. And it’s not that they’re doing anything wrong or there is anything wrong with it, it’s just a different system. Our system is so direct and so nearby. It’s so local and so close that we can do things that they can’t do. The other two things that set us apart are variety and quality. We have a really large variety of products. We make a lot of great and interesting products from scratch. We make hundreds of products every week. And our quality is related to the freshness and the care that goes into each batch. We are always eating and tasting and cooking and trying, and making sure that everything is exactly the way we want it to be. Because our business is so small, we can make changes anytime we need to. Q: Where does your meat come from? A: We get our hogs from a farm outside of Rosetown — Sovereign Hutterite Colony. Our cattle we get from our cattle supply partners and that is a farm out near Cudworth called INC Cattle Company. We really like the speckle park cattle that our partners Rob and Janice have there. Once we found a cattle supply that we wanted, we wanted to make sure we would always have that supply, and Rob and Janice were looking for somebody to help them promote their breed. So that’s what we do for each other, and then we decided to make it official and have them become owners here with us. Our fresh chicken, we get from Prairie Pride in Saskatoon. We get the chicken incredibly fresh because they do it right here in Saskatoon. They do a fantastic job of doing up the chicken that comes from farms right around Saskatoon. Those farms are around Martensville, Warman, Dalmeny, Osler, Hague, Delisle and Vanscoy and that kind of area. So there, again, is the same thing as us doing our own cattle and hogs. We get the chicken natural and we get it as fresh as can be, and that helps us to make better food. Q: What are some of your popular products? A: Definitely steak. The dry-aged speckle park steak is really the king of steaks, especially the T-Bones and prime rib steak and top sirloins. Those are just beautiful steaks. The speckle park cattle were bred and developed in Saskatchewan. It’s the only Saskatchewan breed of cattle. They were developed specifically to thrive and do well and grow well here. The speckle park probably stands out for the tenderness and the meaty texture. The fibers of the meat give it a really nice meaty texture, and a really nice fine web of marbling in the steaks. We are definitely known for our smoked sausage. We have lots and lots of varieties of smoked sausage. Also Afrikaans products. We have a couple of Afrikaans butchers in our staff, so we have lots of awesome Afrikaans foods that we make from scratch. And we are definitely known for bacon. We have a bunch of different kinds of bacon. We have a whole bunch of different kinds of jerky. We sell tons and tons of jerky. And then we have some specialty sausages too, that wouldn’t be easy to find just anywhere. Q: You offer some ready-made sandwiches and other food? A: Yes. That is available in both stores. The most popular for the sandwiches is going to be probably the corn beef or the clubhouse. The most popular pizza is probably going to be the Canadian or the meat lovers. For salads the dill pickle pasta salad is really popular. We’ve just changed our macaroni and cheese salad. Instead of using macaroni now, we are using our own pasta. So fresh pasta is one of our product lines now. And we are using fresh pasta to make our macaroni salad. That’s the kind of thing where you can order ahead or you can walk in and get it, whichever works. Q: You also offer charcuterie and other meat boxes? A: The charcuterie boxes are really spectacular looking and they’re awesome for entertaining. That’s all the fancy and dry cured and air-dried beef and pork products. That one has a South African air-dried sausage we make called dry borscht. Also landjager, which is a real dry-cured type. It’s got a chewy texture and a salty and tangy kind of a flavor. Then we put smoked cheese in there. There’s some sliced dried salami and pepperoni and we make it in the shape of a flower and that kind of thing. The snack trays are super popular. That one’s got jerky, kovbasa, pickled cheddar sausage, smoked cheddar, dilled pickles, honey garlic sticks and that kind of thing Q: You offer custom meat processing at your plant near Martensville? A: The other part of our business is custom processing. That is where farmers bring us their cattle, and we do them up for them. Ranchers and farmers can phone ahead of time and make their appointments and bring them to our plant at the same time and place that our own cattle get delivered. The custom ones that belong to the farmers, we process them and do the cutting and wrapping and sausage and bacon and burger according to what they’re after. We do what they specify, and just charge them for the service. There are options for every single part of the animal. Q: You have won a number of awards? A: We have won King of Kovbasa seven times, including from 2023 to 2025. It is a Saskatchewan-wide sausage competition that’s held in Saskatoon every year. It’s been a good way for people outside of our own town to get introduced to one of our products and our name, so that will they know we are there. The King of Kovbasa is a fundraiser that’s put on by the Ukrainian Canadian Professional Business Association every year. This interview has been edited and condensed Smokehaus Meats & Deli Owners: Trent and Tanya Ens, Daniel and Amelia Van den Heever, Rob and Janice Harasymchuk Address: 225 Payne Bend, Unit 130 Hours: Monday to Saturday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m.; Sunday, 11 a.m. to 5 p.m. Phone: 306-955-9791 Email: [email protected] Website: smokehaus.ca Check: Facebook, Instagram Have you recently started or moved a new business or non-profit organization in Saskatoon? We want to hear your story. Please email [email protected] The Saskatoon Star Phoenix has created an Afternoon Headlines newsletter that can be delivered daily to your inbox so you are up to date with the most vital news of the day. Click here to subscribe. With some online platforms blocking access to the journalism upon which you depend, our website is your destination for up-to-the-minute news, so make sure to bookmark thestarphoenix.com and sign up for our newsletters so we can keep you informed. Click here to subscribe.