- It's Slavic village, right?

So it was a very Polish, Slovenian mainstay through here.

And then here comes these two crazy ladies that are selling French and Italian-inspired meats.

And they're like, but you're in Slavic village.

So even now, four years later we still get people coming in, "Do you do kielbasa?"

No, no we don't.

(upbeat music) My name is Melissa Khoury and I am the owner operator of Saucisson located in Cleveland.

I was the chef at Washington Place Bistro over on the east side.

And I was trying my best to do like in-house butchering and charcuterie making, you know, all these things.

And I just never had enough time.

I just realized that like I'm not happy trying to do all of it.

So why don't I just focus my time and energy on something that actually makes me happy.

And then the rest was just kind of like, I think I like meat and the butchering side more than I like cooking.

On a whim I quit my job in September and by December 7th of that same year I had figured everything out and started Saucisson and I was selling at farmers' markets and pop-up events.

And then I convinced a dear friend of mine, Penny Barend Tagliarina to move from California to Cleveland to be on this crazy meat adventure with me.

And, you know, we, we started something amazing.

So Saucisson is, actually just means sausage.

And there's actually a story behind to why I called the shop Saucisson besides the fact that I wanted nobody to ever know how to pronounce it, which is not true.

But the first charcuterie item that I made by myself that really like, kind of pushed me over the edge to realizing this was something that I really love was saucisson sec, which just means dried sausage.

And that was like kind of the catalyst that was like, holy crap.

I really enjoy doing this.

We bring in whole animals and we also try to utilize the entire animal.

So this is a whole pork shoulder that I'm messing with right now.

And what this will become most likely will be some sausage and stuff.

Supporting local farms and local small businesses is like probably top priority for us here.

And the biggest thing about it is, is that I know exactly what I am giving to the customer.

I've been on these farms.

I have relationships with these farmers.

I know what they're doing to the animals.

How they're raising them, how they're feeding them how they treat them.

And that is something that's extremely important to me because I feel then I have the confidence to tell my customers "I know that this animal was well taken care of.

I know this animal ate really well."

And the end result is going to be you're going to enjoy that product a little bit more than you would just commodity beef or pork or chicken.

Four different sausages in the case this week.

We have a Portuguese.

We have a sweet heat, which is like a Jamaican-inspired.

Texas hot link.

And then a Filipino longganisa.

We just celebrated four years in the shop.

This past December we celebrated seven years in business, which is huge to think that I just quit my job on a whim and I was just going to do it.

And if I failed, I failed, but at least I know I tried.

To be seven years later, it's, it's mind blowing sometimes and I have to pinch myself.

Starting a business, it's scary.

And there are moments throughout the day where I'm like what am I actually doing?

But at the end of the day, knowing that the money that we're spending, supporting small farms to then turn around and cut beautiful steaks and pork chops and make beautiful products to then feed to our customers, that human interaction is huge.

And I think one of the biggest things that keeps me going.

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