How Al's Quality Market carved out a prime location in downtown Barberton built on sausage
You can thank Dennis Gray for doing his part to make downtown Barberton a prime location.
Prime meat, that is — steaks, certainly, but sausages, especially.
Al's Quality Market sits right in the heart of the city's center on 2nd Street, thriving in an age of veganism and imitation beef patties.
Seventy-five years after the market started in an old Acme store, Al's is cooking on all burners.
And it only took nearly two decades of Gray's ownership, 12-hour workdays, help from an early Al's partner and a relocation a few blocks away to revive the barely-surviving establishment.
The mechanics of a sausage entrepreneur
Gray got started with Al's Quality Market when he was still a mechanical engineer.
He didn't know much about running meat markets or restaurants, but he was young and ambitious.
It was May 2005, and he heard Al's was available for the right price.
"I was money-hungry at the time," he said. "I heard this place was for sale."
The business was located on Tuscarawas — or Tusc, as many residents call it — and had a notable changing of the guard when Gray became the new owner.
"The guy I bought this from basically threw me the keys and said, 'Good luck,' " he said.
'Watched my retirement go away'
At the start, Gray said, it was a struggle.
"I worked seven days a week, 12 hours a day," he said.
He invested his labor and savings, learning the business as he worked to expand Al's beyond a break-even enterprise.
"I took over, watched my retirement go away," he said.
Early on, he was the beneficiary of advice and help from one of Al's early partners, Dick Buehrle, who developed the sausage recipes starting in 1952 that help distinguish Al's.
"Half of what we do… is sausage," Gray said.
Help from an Al's legend
Buehrle's assistance was instrumental to Al's later success.
"If he wouldn't have hung out and trained me, this place would probably be a memory," Gray said.
Instead, it's become a flourishing downtown Barberton business after Gray moved Al's to its current 2nd Street NW location and added an event center.
That's a story in itself.
Beat-up truck and a storefront church
Gray said a serendipitous drive along 2nd Street led to the relocation and subsequent success of Al's.
"I was driving down 2nd, (my) truck falling apart," he said. "I see a kid putting the for sale sign in the window."
The building had been a storefront church, and Gray saw the light. It would become the new location of Al's.
He was able to assemble financing, including a purchase of the building, against the counsel of number-crunching professionals.
"Moving to 2nd Street saved us because it put everything under one roof," he said.
Buehrle said he wasn't on board with the move.
Not at first, anyway.
"When he told me he was going to move from Tusc to here, I thought it was a bad idea," Buehrle said. "I was wrong, again."
The right mix
Gray said the restaurant and event center comprise about half Al's business. The center was completely renovated in 2019, and has a capacity of 299.
"We believe it's the largest in Barberton," he said.
The restaurant has limited, lunchtime hours, but is very popular during its hours of operation.
"I think we are the busiest at lunch in Barberton," he said.
The other half of the business comes from the sausage and assorted meats behind the glass cases. He has no illusions about the market's role in the business.
"The meat market is the anchor," he said. "(The) biggest part of the pie."
'Carnivore candy store'
Asked to sum up the lure of Al's in a single sentence, Gray offers this: "It's an Eastern/Central European carnivore candy store."
Buehrle said he decided to help Gray learn the meat business ropes when they met at a gathering where he asked the new owner his background in the business.
"He said he knew a guy on a farm," Buehrle said. "I thought he was nuts."
But Gray's commitment convinced him to help. He taught Gray to master the secret recipes Buehrle had developed a half-century earlier. Recipes that included Polish, Italian, Slovenian and Hungarian sausage.
In the early days, Buehrle said he made the sausage without a lot of help.
"I'd mix it by hand until we bought a mixer," he said.
Following Sunday services at St. Augustine Catholic Church, he'd get to work.
"After Mass, I'd go make 300 pounds of sausage," he said.
130,000 pounds a year
Gray said he currently has about 20 employees, and his son now mixes the sausage. His daughter works the counter, and he expects them to continue the business when he takes on a reduced role.
In recent years, Al's has gained a wider reputation, appearing in food industry and consumer publications, including a prominent place in "Road Food" by Jane and Michael Stern. That's translated to more recognition and a bigger bottom line.
"I bet we move 130,000 pounds a year, if not more," Gray said.
He recalls one holiday season when Al's scrambled to keep up with demand.
"(We did) 5,000 pounds of sausage in one (30-hour) shift," he said.
On the 75th anniversary this year of the business, he said he looks forward to the day — not yet — when he can become a part-time Al's worker.
"I'm going to give my keys to the kids," he said.
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Leave a message for Alan Ashworth at 330-996-3859 or email him at aashworth@gannett.com. Follow him on Twitter at @newsalanbeaconj.
This article originally appeared on Akron Beacon Journal: Al's in downtown Barberton: A 'carnivore candy store' for meat lovers
