Bay City Sausage Co.: They have the meats

By Doug Barker

For Washington Coast Magazine

Are you the “MEAT: It’s what’s for dinner” sort? If so, a cow-spotted building near Westport is calling your name.

If you’ve traveled State Route 105 between Aberdeen and Westport, you’ve probably passed the Bay City Sausage Co. without noticing it before it’s too late to stop. Next time that happens, find a safe spot to turn around and go back. You won’t regret it.

The smallish white-and-black cinderblock structure sits along the south side of the road just east of the Elk River bridge. Bright red signs tout the shop’s most popular products, including German garlic sausage, kielbasa, beer sausage and cheese curd.

Ronda Strode is the third owner of the business started by Otto Schniadt back in the 1980s. The inventory falls mostly into two categories: sausages and cheeses. There is some fresh (raw) sausage, but most of Bay City’s offerings are fully cooked in a smoker. There’s also local smoked salmon and tuna.

Strode’s performance measurement is straightforward: “I want everything to be the best they’ve ever had.”

The cheese comes from Wisconsin, the pork and beef from Seattle, the wood chips from Oregon and the spices from an area wholesaler. Nothing too exotic; the trick is mixing it all together in the right ratios, and Strode has a knack for it.

Her execution of the founder’s recipes, plus the ones she’s added on her own, have made it the kind of roadside stop that has lots of repeat customers. One summer Monday morning, as visitors headed inland after a weekend in Westport, four of the five cars that pulled in over an hour’s time had shoppers who already seemed to know exactly what they wanted when they came through the door.

Now Strode’s children, Kyle, 29, and Kami, 24, are adding new recipes and taking on bigger roles — and business is booming.

“We can’t keep up anymore,” says Strode. “Business is better than ever.”

In the fall, everybody works long hours. That’s the season when hunters bring in their game to be smoked or butchered and wrapped. Many fishermen also bring in their catch to be smoked.

The shop carries at least a dozen flavors of smoked sausages made from a mixture of pork and beef. Strode favors Hungarian, but the biggest seller is German garlic. There’s also a cranberry-studded sausage, a nod to the local cranberry crops. The various sausages retail for $8 to $12 a pound.

There’s a long list of specialty items at various price points, such as pepperoni and beef sticks, flavored jerky, and smoked tuna, salmon, turkey breast and bacon. A popular item right now is the Crazy Pineapple Stick, a pineapple-flavored beef stick that sells for $15.99 a pound.

The Wisconsin cheeses are smoked at the shop. Chunks of cheddar, Havarti and Gouda, all burnished in a shade of brown, fill a couple of cases. Most are marked at around $12 per pound. And at $8 a pound, the cheese curds — tasty nuggets of cheese that weren’t pressed into blocks and aged — are kid favorites.

Various goodies such as saltwater taffy also are displayed for sale. In addition, the shop offers party trays with selections of various meats and cheeses.

During a typical summer, Bay City Sausage sets up a barbecue grill most weekends at festivals around Grays Harbor, offering hot-off-the-grill sausages on rolls. This past summer, the usual major events were all canceled because of the coronavirus.

Still, business is increasing this year and products are continually being added. The remodeling will help a lot, Strode says, allowing her more production and display space.

She thought she could improve on the cranberry mustard she used to get from a well-known brand, so she created her own, along with a barbecue sauce. Kami also recently introduced a jalepeño tuna dip, and the shop is selling carne asada now.

There are no plans to change the cow paint job, however. It’s distinctive enough to catch the eye of motorists who drive past — and many of them seem to turn around.

Editor’s note: The full version of this feature and several others will appear in the Fall edition of Washington Coast Magazine, due out in early September. Call 360-532-4000 to purchase a copy, or to subscribe. The quarterly magazine costs only $14 per year; individual copies are $3.95.