Bartek Glinka & Brendan D’Amelio

Bert: I hear you went to the Deli first?

Conversation with a chef: Yes. I've seen the product. I read the catalogue, so I'm totally across it.

Bert: It's just gearing up here. Monday shouldn't be too busy today but we're starting to see signs of Christmas. The orders came through, which is great. I think we have to put a stop to them this week. Welcome to Sunny Dandenong. On a day like today, we're running fully off solar panel. That's one of the things I like to point out. We own two factories, and then that whole roof is fully solar power.

How long have you been here?

Brendan: In this factory, for 5 years.

So the production's got bigger?

Brendan: Definitely. As you can see, it's a small space, but we really just make a go of it.

Bert: The old site was like an old butcher shop with a little smoker out the back. Brendan and I learned the craft there. This factory used to be an old smokehouse, actually, and we bought this on a whim. A lot of work went into what's under the ground, and outfitting it.

Brendan: I was actually in the process of moving into my old house and Bert called me while I was moving in, he goes, mate, there's a factory up for sale, should I buy it? I'm like, what are you talking about?

Bert: Well, the auction was happening. It seemed reasonable, so I bought it.

Brendan: That was 4 or 5 years ago, and then we've just been growing it ever since.

Are your backgrounds in this area?

Brendan: No. We're from the corporate world.

Bert: Brendan is my brother-in-law. And he was following my sister since he was about 14. I worked for the federal government, and he worked for carsales.com.au. We didn't really like it and we said, let's do something different. I'm Polish, and Brendan is Italian. Every year, we'd go to the Polish Festival, and we thought, let's do a Kransky store just as a pop up. We bought the Kransky's from the OG owners of Uncles. Being Polish, my dad always had small goods in his fridge. And when my mates came over, they always thought they were so good and we thought, let's do this pop-up store with these kranskys. We got our girlfriends at the time, friends on board, and we got a 3 x 6 tent and we just had a lot of fun. And we sold them all out.

Brendan: At the time, when we were buying them from Uncle's, we said a crazy number. We had no idea, so just said, let's just get 1,000 kranskys and go for it. And he laughed at us and said, you're never going to sell it. You're going to be calling back and wanting to sell them back to me. We sold out in 3 hours. That's where the passion grew. We thought, maybe there's something to this.

Bert: This obsession then came about with wanting to learn how to make smallgoods. Then those owners were getting a bit older, and they didn't want to sell to us. They said, you guys are too precious. They'd known me as one of the Polish kids in the community and they said, you're university educated. Why would you do this? We didn't have an option. Eventually the old fellow, because we kept insisting, he told us to come out to the back of the lot on a summer's day like today, and it would have been at least 30 degrees. And he got this big delivery of wood out the back, and he just gave us a couple of axes and said, have a go. We were out there for a little while and then he came out and said: first lesson in business that you have to know is what it takes to do every job. And it went from there.

It's very karate kid, isn't it? Wax on, wax off.

Brendan: He was was big on lessons. He was a good mentor for us. He's since passed away, but hed always pop in with advice. It was his little baby, but he trusted it with us to continue the legacy and here we are.

Bert: This was always our dream to get a production facility like this. We're pretty proud of it. It's not a huge amount of space, but we do things pretty efficiently. We try to get things in and out of the door as quickly as we can.

Brendan: We don't hold a lot of product. We try and process it within 1 to 2 days. And it's basically out the door pretty much within 3 to 4 days. You'll see once we walk around it the reason we do it that way.

Are are you butchering as well?

Brendan: No. We we used to at the old the old place. we don't really have the space to bring in whole carcasses. We have really good suppliers and we cut them to the secs we need. We're not butchers by trade. We are smallgoods makers. We concentrate on what we're good at.

Bert: We only use certified free-range pork and beef and chicken.

This is all so well laid out. Did you map it out at the start?

Bert: Sort of, because we had no experience. As we've as we've grown, we're learning. It is a constant process of improvement. We're pretty big on critiquing things. January we will basically say, how did we go? Where can we improve? We've been lucky along the way. I think we get a pretty good crew, building a bit more of a leadership team and people to lean on, people that are a lot more experienced than us. I think we're still having fun.

Brendan: Exactly. But a lot of it we are learning on the fly as we go. So, things that we were doing 3, 4 years ago, we're not doing now because we've learned there is a better, smarter way.

How do you get to know of those ways? Is that through going to conferences? How do you learn what you need to do to refine it?

Brendan: That's definitely one thing. Going to Germany was definitely eye opening. Smallgoods is like a religion over there. There was definitely a lot that we took from that. But also, it's a small industry, so in the early days, we were able to contact a few people and they gave us advice, became a little bit of a mentor to us. And we've done the same now as well. Theres that camaraderie. You can help each other out. But it is a unique industry. So what might work for one manufacturer won't necessarily work for the other. We've had to also make things fit for us. It's only really been doing it that we can actually work out how to make it a bit more efficient? How can we make it easier?

Bert: At its core, I think what drives us is, if we pick up a pack of our product and if we don't think it's perfect, we're often being pretty critical ourselves in saying, well, how can we improve the experience? Are there enough slices in the pack? Is this pack easier to use? Does it tell the messages that we want it to tell? We just keep evolving. We have a monthly management meeting. Everyone's tasked with this constant improvement mentality. It's good.

Brendan: Empowering people is probably what makes the job a lot easier. YHow do we improve? Well, generally, you speak to the people that are actually on the floor, and they've got some ideas.

They seem very like a very cohesive team. Everyone knows what they're doing.

Brendan: What did you think of downstairs?

Oh, it's fascinating. I'm so impressed. I haven't been to smallgoods production places before. It's small, but it totally makes sense, just the flow of things. Everyone's just doing their Willy Wonka part of the machine. It's great.

Brendan:We've been to some factories where it didn't make sense and was confusing and we didn't want that. We wanted to be able to go, well, it comes in one section, it has to come out the other section. Everybody has a touch point until it makes its way out the door. But if you make it easy, then it's also much more engaging and it's less stressful. Its a much more fun environment to be in.

Bert: I think that's probably the biggest thing, keeping the team engaged. We do blind tastings, and people can get picked and we'll put our ham up randomly without disclosing which one's ours against some of the competing brands, and then they all score it. And if we don't score the best, then we need to take a good hard look at ourselves and figure out why. Because for a small manufacturer like us to stand out, we need to be the best. That's the only way people will be prepared to come and pay a premium for a product.

Brendan: You've really only got two things. Youve got quality or price, and we can't really match the price, so let's achieve what we put in, and that's quality.

I guess it's too, it's a different world now, and once you took over the company, I guess there's a lot of social media and marketing and telling your story as well that goes into it, because how do you get new customers? I don't know what the original people did. They probably had their following which suited the size of their company, but I guess nowadays it is about reaching other people, isn't it?

Bert: Spot on.

Brendan: In the early days, there were a couple of methods that we took. We knew how good Uncles was. When we first started, we had a very aged or very old clientele and we knew we needed to get the word out there. We needed to get some more customers. So there were a few things we did. One of them was we opened up a couple of cafes, one was right next door to us, Young Uncles. We are known in the community as the Young Uncles. So that was really good. We were the first ones in Dandenong, the first cafe in Dandenong to do specialty coffee, pulled pork burgers, brisket burgers, an inner city cafe, basically. We realised a lot of the workers in Dandenong were from the inner city. They just came into Dandenong because that's where the job was. That was probably the first thing that really worked in terms of getting our name out there. And then we do a lot of events. We do Melbourne Food and Wine events, and just put our hand up to anything, basically. Just hustled. That was our motto back then.

Bert: For Valentine's Day, we did a sausage bouquet for Valentine's Day, and back in the day, like, it went mini viral. Brendan was on the channel 9, channel 10 news the day before Valentine's Day. I got called up to be on Nova FM.

Brendan: It was a hectic time.

Bert: We ended up to shut it down. It was just one of those classic stories of calling up mates and saying who's free? Who can deliver dausage bouquets for us? It was fun.

What do you think it was that worked? Because when you did those first 1,000 kranskys from Uncle, why do you think he thought you wouldn't sell them, and how do you think you were able to?

Brendan: He had an older clientele, and the Polish festival back then was fairly new. It wasn't what it is today. Plus what Bert was saying before, I think he thought we were young and naive. But to be honest, we probably were naive, but when you're young, you take more risks. You're willing to give anything a go, and I think we just wanted to be in the food industry. A couple of times we thought of buying a cafe or a restaurant or a bar, but they never really resonated with us. Whereas once we once we did the Polish festival and we sold those Kranskys, we thought maybe there's something to it, so then we really started to pay more attention to the product and learn a bit more about what went into making the product, that's where we really started to become passionate about the smallgoods side of things, and about the Polish side of things as well, and actually making something. I think that's where the passion really resonated with us, as opposed to just having a food business.

That's right. Well, I guess both of you have your Italian side and then the Polish side, it's in your DNA, this idea of making food, and that must have been really satisfying having that link to the past. I think that it's really important in this day and age that people are going back to artisanal things, because I think it's a really good reminder of taking the time over products and having that link to the past as well.

Brendan: In the early days when we were making the sausages and the products in the back of the old butcher shop in an almost rundown building, it definitely had that nostalgia of being in Nonno's backyard and making salamis and that sort of vibe, so although it was a hectic time, it was just pure joy because it brought back those memories.

Were they quite happy to give you their recipes or not?

Brendan: If they had recipes.

Bert: I should say before you speak, Brendan, the deal was when we went into partnership together, it was I'll do administration and sales and managing the retail store and then Brandon will just make product. But poor Brandon, like, he was stuck in the back with a couple of Polish old dudes.

Brendan: It was a little bit intimidating because I didn't speak Polish at the time. I didn't really quite understand it, but that's all they spoke, and that's how they communicated. There was a lot of Polish swearing that I had to learn. But also it was very traditional in the sense that there was no recipes. Everything was done by touch, everything was done by taste. You'd make one batch and then the old uncle would tell us, this is how you make it, and then we'd make it again the following week and it'd be completely different. It became quickly apparent that I needed to create recipes. So we sat him down and Bert translated and I wrote down some recipes and then over time we tweaked them a little bit to make it a little bit more consistent, but also more palatable, and since then we now have recipes.

Bert: He operated more by something which we still need to apply today, but, he used his senses. I'm not sure if you noticed, but as you walked past, there was a little grill set up, and they were grilling a batch of frankfurts, just a little taster because we want the guys there to be able to pick up if the flavour profile is correct before they commit to making that 100-kilo batch. Unfortunately, we have been in a situation where we've made a batch, and we've had to bin it. Although not for a long time.

Brendan: And there are external factors that could change how the product comes out, so we always test it before we actually fully commit to making it. That was something he taught us. He would always try it.

And when I was hanging out in the deli reading the catalogue, it mentions cooking the German sausages in gently simmering water because of the fragile skin. What do you use for the skin?

Bert: We predominantly use natural casings, some form of animal intestine.

Brendan: It's predominantly hog or sheep. Our Kranzkys, our larger sausages, would be hog casing, and then our smaller, like our Kabana or Frankfurt, would be sheep. Not many smallgoods producers would use natural. They'd use collagen because it's a lot easier to use; less breakage, easier with sizing. Natural casing is more of a unique way of working.

So the sausages, you can't just throw them on the barbie?

Bert: You can. But with the German ones in particular, if you get the franks the boys are making downstairs, a lot of people would boil them in a single pot and you get that open sausage, whereas we make a point of making it perfect. Just simmer it to the right temperature so that skin will stay, and all that juice isn't lost in the water. It's retained in that sausage.

Brendan: But it's also it comes down to the texture. Your Kranzkys you can grill because they're a thicker, coarser meat, but your Frankfurts, they're emulsified, so it breaks down, so that's why if you put it on a grill, it bursts at the top.

And the German breakfast sausage, is that weisse wurste? I love weisse wurste.

Bert: It's a favourite in the factory. We haven't done it for a while, but there was a tradition every time we do that product, which is probably weekly at least fortnightly in and we get to open a nice mustard and everyone in the factory has one, so we don't make much money on that one. If you ask, especially production, it's their favourite. It's so nice. It's got fresh parsley, lemon, onion.

I also noticed there's a recipe in the catalogue that mentioned the smoky end bits, and I wondered what that was. And then I saw the actual packet of the smoky end bits. Thats so great.

Bert: That's a bargain. That's a real hidden gem in the deli because, you walked through the facility and you saw two slicing rooms, one right directly below us and the other one. When we're slicing the packs, we don't want to give people the little end bit. So all of the end bits end up basically shipped off to the deli sold there at a really reasonable price.

But that's such a good idea. I think they're so great for a smoky stew.

Bert: It's literally the best part.

Brendan: Its where all the flavour is, pretty much. And it stews, the Bigos, which is the Hunter Stew. We make smoked baked beans too.

I saw that you do salmon as well. New Zealand salmon. How great.

Bert: The Ora King is an amazing product but gee its oily. It's just really challenging to work through.

Brendan: It's a delicate fish compared to the to the Tasmanian. It's the preferred salmon in our house, but, yes, it's a very oily, delicate fish. Not being biased, but on the market, we take care of it and it cooks and smells and tastes great.

Bert: We smoke it in those open fire ovens, low and slow for a long time, it's almost cold smoked, but we do we do heat it at the very end, but it gives you a soft, subtle, smooth texture. It's a really great product.

Brendan: Put it on a bagel or on eggs. It's so good.

Just to get back to Christmas hams, you were saying when we first started talking that that you've got it cut off now because you've had so many orders. Has that grown every year?

Brendan: 100%. When we first took over, we didn't realise how big Christmas was, but it's massive and the customer base has grown throughout the year, but Christmas has spectacularly grown. Because we're not only just focusing on Melbourne, we're focusing on all of Victoria and some interstate as well.

Bert: Coming from European backgrounds, we never experienced the Anglo ham tradition up until I met my wife. That's when I think I glazed my first ham. That was before Uncles, but then when we did our first Christmas at Uncles, we realised, oh, we're getting some ham orders here. And it grew from there. Nowadays, we actually had an 8 o'clock meeting this morning with all the staff. We're really now packing a lot of orders for Christmas, and we're making a lot of hams for Christmas. And we had a good chat about how its pretty special to make a product that is the centrepiece of such an important day. And for many families, they'll sit down and they'll gather that one day of the year and they'll sit down and the ham will be the feature that everyone talks about. And we just want to infuse that thought into everyone that puts a hand into making that Uncles product because the way we see it, if someone does choose an Uncles ham, that's a real honour and we want to make sure that that we do it justice. It's great to see that every year, the word's getting out.

Brendan: Especially now with the cost of living and whatnot. A lot of families, it's the time they splurge, so we want to make sure that what we give them is spectacular. It's special.

Bert: That classic ham, which is recognized by the blue label. That is the original recipe. And that is one thing that I remember, old Uncle had the precise recipe. He was suss about his staff finding the recipe. So it was written on this back wall in the back of the production area, there was just some numbers scribbled.

Brendan: But it wasn't correct. He deliberately had it 200 grams off, which was the bucket weight. So no one knew exactly what the recipe was.

Bert: So it was this dodgy writing on the wall, but it's a pretty incredible flavour profile and we haven't changed that at all. That's a homage to the original. Since starting Uncles and starting this journey with Brendan we both became parents. Brandon's about to have his fourth child with Anya and then we've got three. We just became more and more conscious about eating the best food we possibly can.

Brendan: We wanted to make sure we could produce a product that our families would eat. At the end of the day, that's really all we wanted. It didn't matter if anyone else ate it. We just knew if our family enjoyed it, eventually something would happen.

Bert: The classic brine uses a pretty mild amount of nitrites. Sodium nitrites are the most commonly used preservatives. And although the numbers are low comparatively to what's out there in the greater commercial scene, we wanted to try and make something completely natural. It took us probably 3 or 4 years.

Brendan: There was a lot of testing, a lot of trial and error, a lot of batches thrown out, a lot of cardboard-like ham, but eventually we got there. But the proudest moment was when we made it and we tasted it and thought it tasted pretty good and then we took it home and we got the thumbs up from our wives and our kids. We knew we were onto something. The fact that my family loved it, that was the biggest tick of approval, but now it's doing well, and I'm really proud of it. I think that in terms of all the products we have made, I think nailing that was probably the best.

How many Christmas hams do you do?

Bert: Well into the thousands. Theres a spreadsheet somewhere on there. Probably over 10 000.

Brendan: It grows every year, and it starts earlier every year. This year, we started mid-late October, and it's going to go on until late December. So, it'd be up there.

So with all that in mind, was it a good decision to switch to this industry from what you were doing before?

Brendan: With anything, there are always ups and downs. It has definitely been a roller coaster, but definitely more good times than bad times. But to see where we are now, it's quite a lot. I think after the 1st year when we sat down and mapped out the next 5 years. And then when we bought this factory, we realised every year we ticked off, we actually achieved those goals, so it's been pretty special that we've been able to do

that.

Bert: We are definitely happy to be part of a great industry, and in Melbourne as well because Melbourne's such a great food hub, and it is great to be part of the scene, and on a mission to give people access to good quality smallgoods.

Uncle's Smallgoods, 32 Gladstone Road, Dandenong