Nearly 70 years ago, in the shop on Gratiot Avenue on Detroit's East side, nestled in a largely German-Polish neighborhood, Erich and Willie Alexander, butchers, made a partnership with Otto Hornung. The Alexanders cut the meat, and Hornung made the sausages in the back room. Hornung used recipes that he brought with him from Bavaria: recipes for bloodtongue sausage and speckwurst; for braunschweiger and the dry-cured salamis like landjaeger and holsteiner; for all manner of superb, hand-crafted sausages and other delicacies. What has not changed over the years is Alexander & Hornung's insistence on a measure of quality rarely found today. “We still make things the way they've always been made,” says Bernie Polen, whose father, Merle, was Willie Alexander’s nephew. Now operating out of a modern, 100,000 sq. ft. facility in St. Clair Shores, MI, Alexander & Hornung is able to accommodate the needs of the largest retailers nationwide. Alexander & Hornung is big enough to handle the largest national customers and small enough to create special recipes for your private label needs. label needs.
