Quality, tradition part of recipe

HOW THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE: Paul Skoczylas, owner of Central Falls Provision, in the company’s High Street store. He went to work for the family business in 1980, taking over a decade later. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT
HOW THE SAUSAGE GETS MADE: Paul Skoczylas, owner of Central Falls Provision, in the company’s High Street store. He went to work for the family business in 1980, taking over a decade later. / PBN PHOTO/NATALJA KENT

Paul Skoczylas grew up around kielbasa. By age 8, he was lending a hand at Central Falls Provision, his family’s Polish sausage shop, and through high school and college he was working there full time during the summers. Photos from the period show him in front of the oven, holding a rack of sausages, wearing a T-shirt with “kielbasa kid” stenciled across the chest.
Just before graduating from the University of Rhode Island, a business professor offered to help Skoczylas get a job at chemical giant DuPont, but the family business was in his blood.
He took one week off after graduation in 1980 and then returned to Central Falls Provision, where he worked alongside his parents and took over as owner of the business a decade later.
“I wanted to help out my parents,” Skoczylas said, his father a few feet away at the shop. “This is one of those places where people come in and have memories of the place from way back. I have those memories also.”
Central Falls Provision has been making kielbasa in Rhode Island’s smallest city since 1923, when Skoczylas’ grandfather, Vincent, opened the shop on the banks of the Blackstone River.
Vincent Skoczylas emigrated to the United States from Poland and first settled in New Britain, Conn, where he worked for a meat processor and eventually saved enough money to move his family to Central Falls.
Through the years, Central Falls Provision has remained remarkably unchanged, even as the community around it has gone through significant transformation and turmoil.
The company utilizes traditional sausage-making methods, recipes and even some of the same machines used in the 1950s.
For generations, the menu has featured two staples: kielbasa and baked loaf, a spiced mix of pork and veal, sliced and served hot or as a cold cut, sometimes referred to as the “Polish steak.”
Only now, after a recession and the rise of the Internet, has Skoczylas started adding innovation to tradition.
He’s started making Italian sausage, bratwurst, a 7-inch hotdog and a spicy kielbasa that appeals to today’s heat-seeking palates.
“In the old days we used to be so busy we refused business, but a few years ago it started to get slow and we had to change our ways and communicate with our customers,” Skoczylas said. “We still have all the old customers and we are getting a lot of new ones. That’s why we make the spicy kielbasa and we have branched out into new items.” In addition to new offerings, changes have included the Internet, which Central Falls Provision started using to take mail orders a year ago.
Internet sales are still only about 5 percent of Central Falls Provision’s business, Skoczylas said, but they are rapidly rising.
While the Polish and eastern European community still supports Central Falls Provision, the customer base is now more diverse than ever and includes a wide range of ethnic groups.
In addition to its direct sales, Central Falls Provision is carried in approximately 75 supermarkets and eight restaurants.
In an average week, Skoczylas said Central Falls Provision will produce about one ton of sausage.
But during holidays, when customers splash out for large family feasts, that output multiplies.
The week before Christmas can exceed 3 tons, while Easter, the busiest week, can exceed 5 tons.
“It’s already getting really busy,” Skoczylas said in the second week of December.
Turning out so much product the traditional way takes time.
Skoczylas said one batch of kielbasa takes more than one day to produce and includes boning the meat, chopping and spicing it, stuffing it and cooking it.
To mark the company’s 90th anniversary in 2013, Central Falls Provision aims to put on 90 events and promotions to thank its home city. They’ll include donations to the Adams Memorial Library and free samples to riders passing by on the Blackstone Valley bicycle tours.
Likely even better for the city than Central Falls Provisions’ donations are plans to hire as the Internet and new products boost sales.
In the next year, Skoczylas said he hopes to hire another full-time worker and a part-time worker.
But while growth is nice, Skoczylas said it isn’t his top priority and he doesn’t want the business to get so large that he can’t maintain control of the product.
“It is all about quality – that is why we have existed for 90 years,” Skoczylas said. •

COMPANY PROFILE
Central Falls Provision
Owner: Paul Skoczylas
Type of Business: Sausage maker
Location: 847 High St., Central Falls
Employees: 5
Year Established: 1923
Annual Sales: NA

No posts to display