(Photo by Nadine Arroyo Rodriguez - KJZZ)

Schreiner’s Fine Sausages is located on 7th Street and Whitton Avenue just north of Osborn Road in Pheonix. It's been here since 1955.

(Photo by Nadine Arroyo Rodriguez - KJZZ)

The meat cases at Schreiner's Fine Sausages are filled with different kinds of sausages and other items.

On the corner of Seventh Street and Whitton Avenue in Phoenix is a small red and white shop.  It’s Schreiner’s Fine Sausages. Did you know Schreiner’s has been a one-of-a-kind store in Arizona since the 1950s?   

“Yeah, pretty unique. I don’t know that you’ll find one place that has this kind of variety," said owner Nancy Schiller.

"We probably make 60 maybe kinds. First would be the real traditional like your fresh bratwurst, like your sweet Italian, hot Italian, Polish sausage, some of the lunch meats like you salamis," Schiller said. "And then over the years it’s just evolved from actually customer demand and different type of products."

Sausage varieties include Cajun French, bacon-maple blueberry, lemon-garlic chicken and a spicy beer hot sausage.

The store is the size of a large family room. Red and white checkered curtains decorate the quaint shop. The two meat cases filled with different kinds of sausages and lunch meats are the counters. Customers line up to place their order in a small waiting area.   

"This is the original building. We have never changed any of it," Schiller said.

Schreiner’s Fine Sausages storefront and the original adjacent food processing building opened in 1955. The original owner, Hugo Schreiner, came from a long line of sausage makers, and when he and his wife arrived in the Valley from New York, he decided to open the business. 

Schiller said her late husband was a native to this Longview West Neighborhood and began working at the shop when he was 13.  After college, he purchased the business from the ailing Mr. Schreiner, as he’s still remembered today.

“I married into the business. I started working here when I was in college and kind of put myself through school working here," Schiller said. "And I knew my husband because I lived in the neighborhood also, and that’s how I got the job and married him and never left, either."

In one year, about half a million pounds of meat is made into sausages.

In the last several years, the food processing plant had to be expanded. About 85 percent of the business is wholesale to restaurants throughout Arizona.  But selling to the public is what has made this place special.

“There’s a lot of history here. We hope it just continues on and on. But, there is a lot of history and we have customers coming in for 30 years and that’s just a wonderful feel,"  Schiller said.

If you ever travel through Glendale, Calif., look for a similar shop.  A Schreiner’s also was opened there in the 1950s by Hugo Schreiner's cousin.