Despite a sluggish national economy, at least one area business is booming with catalogue and online sales in the run up to the holidays.
Workers in the shipping department at New Braunfels Smokehouse were busy Monday filling more than 4,000 orders in time for Thanksgiving.
“It’s been going very well,” said Mike Dietert, vice president and general manager.
Recent orders are consistent with last year’s record numbers, Dietert said, though some regular customers are ordering less.
Add increases in requests for private labeling of smokehouse products with custom company or family labels and business is good, Dietert said.
New Braunfels Smokehouse ships two million catalogs to customers each year and during the busy holiday season workers process more than 120,000 pounds of meat per week into smoked ham, turkey, bacon, sausage, jerky and other products for specialty gift boxes.
The downtown plant — on Guenther Street near the railroad tracks — is on the site of what was once a brewery. Owned by the Dunbar family of San Antonio since 1945, the business grew from being a cold storage facility in the days before home refrigeration to being an ice plant and meat-processing facility.
In the 1960s, a small “tasting room” where customers could sample specialized smoked meats grew to become a popular restaurant at the intersection of I-35 and Highway 46 (now on a smaller site nearby). Around the same time, the company’s mail-order business took off.
Business has followed an uphill trajectory since the 1980s, Dietert said, with heavy online and catalogue sales.
Today, New Braunfels Smokehouse employs a total of 125 workers during the holidays, including 70 year-round, full-time staff.
In the days before Thanksgiving, workers tally as many as 4,000 boxes per day — enough to fill two tractor-trailers. In the weeks before Christmas, workers ship as many as 25,000 boxes per day, or about seven tractor-trailers, Dietert said.
“They’ve always been a community player,” said Rusty Brockman, director of economic development with the Greater New Braunfels Chamber of Commerce. “They are stalwart and what New Braunfels is all about.”
And it’s not just holiday business, but also New Braunfels Smokehouse’s “creative entrepreneurship” and savvy online ordering and catalogue sales that supply a steady flow of revenue year-round, Brockman said.
Other area businesses are having similar success with online revenues.
Great American Products manufactures and distributes custom tankards, belt buckles, shot glasses and aluminum water bottles among many items emblazoned with sports team and championship logos.
“We’re hurting just like everybody else,” said Kim Holtz, sales executive at Great American Products. But online shipping averages about 2,000 orders per day.
The company employs 95 people at the Seguin Avenue facility, and though business is down about 40 percent in recent years, online sales are up 75 percent from 2007, keeping workers busy through the holidays, Holtz said.
