The Decision That Turned Johnsonville Into America’s Top Sausage Brand
Our American Stories
iHeartPodcasts
4.6 • 817 Ratings
🗓️ 10 March 2026
⏱️ 11 minutes
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Summary
On this episode of Our American Stories, Johnsonville Sausage grew into the best-selling sausage brand in the United States, but the company’s success did not come from product alone. It also came from a culture that placed unusual trust in its employees.
When a Johnsonville plant in Watertown, Wisconsin burned down, the company faced a difficult choice about what to do with the workers who suddenly had no place to work. Instead of layoffs, Johnsonville’s leadership made an unexpected decision.
Ralph Stayer, former CEO and board chairman of Johnsonville Sausage, shares the story of that moment and how a commitment to doing the right thing helped shape the company’s culture and long-term success.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is an I-Heart podcast. |
| 0:02.6 | Guaranteed Human. |
| 0:14.4 | And we continue with our American stories, |
| 0:17.7 | and now it's time for our Do the Right Things series |
| 0:20.0 | about ethical dilemmas that's |
| 0:21.8 | sponsored by the Daniels Fund. And our own Alex Cortez brings us this latest edition. |
| 0:28.5 | Ralph Steyer is the founder of Johnsonville's sausage. Back around 1980, Johnsonville was growing |
| 0:35.5 | 20% a year and Ralph was excited, but no one else was. |
| 0:39.8 | And Ralph realized that he was the problem. |
| 0:43.2 | He had made it all about him with every employee reporting to him all 150 of them. |
| 0:49.5 | Ralph decided to do a 180 and make it all about them, empowering what they now call each other team members |
| 0:55.5 | more radically than perhaps any other company. Ralph took himself out of almost everything. |
| 1:01.8 | The Johnsonville team members decide whom they want to hire, fire, and work with. |
| 1:05.8 | They created the system for the profit sharing pool that's around 30% of all profits. |
| 1:11.6 | And together they created the number one sausage brand in America. |
| 1:16.6 | Ralph couldn't be more proud of the team and the ethical decisions that they've made. |
| 1:22.6 | One day I got a phone call that I plant in Watertown, Wisconsin, burned down. It was destroyed, so we needed to move as quickly as possible to get that new plant up because |
| 1:36.3 | 25% of our total production was coming out of that plant. |
| 1:39.3 | The great aside that other people, other plants stepped up, |
| 1:45.0 | the people stepped up and increased production |
| 1:48.0 | and worked extra shifts, weekends for almost a year to cover. |
| 1:55.0 | I mean, I can't say enough about people's attitudes. |
... |
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