Inside Saylors & Co in Hellertown
Saylors is named after owner and third-generation butcher Tim Mease’s mother, whose last name was Saylor. His family previously ran a farm store and a stand at the Allentown Fairgrounds Farmers Market, selling a variety of meats. When Mease married Maria Verzino (a former banker and Italian specialty store owner), they merged their businesses together and added “and Co,” dubbing Saylors a unique specialty food market.
Maria Verzino | Co-owner
Describe the vast array of offerings available at Saylors & Co. How often do your offerings change?
We made Saylors & Co a store that we personally would want to shop and support. We bring quality homemade foods to the homes in our community—fresh local meats that are antibiotic-free, locally grown veggies, fresh baked breads that come in daily, a unique variety of cheeses to create a killer charcuterie board, desserts that make it look like you slaved all day, wholesome meals that you can feed your family with and smoked meats that will make you never go back to regular store-bought bacon.
Everything in the meat department stays consistent every week. We do change our prepared foods weekly. We love staying on trend and creating seasonal meals because that’s when we can bring in the best ingredients.
Tell us about your home-cooked, pre-made dinners and prepared entrées.
We offer home-cooked meals that are made with quality ingredients. We season with kosher salt, we cook with wine, make our own stock, cut all our own veggies, bake our own desserts and use Saylors’ meats. Our homemade specialty foods are a deal. For the same cost of fast food, you can instead bring home a home-cooked meal!
What are some specialties that regulars love? For instance, Pizza Thursdays!
Yes! Our Pizza Thursdays are always a hit. We make our own dough, sauce and offer a couple gourmet flavors. Our customers love them all! They love shopping here for different occasions, whether it’s grabbing a few steaks for the grill, or something to satisfy their sweet tooth. It’s a full foodie shopping experience!
Tell us about your dessert offerings.
We offer desserts weekly, made in house by our pastry chef. Our buttercream icing will have you coming back for more after one bite. We offer cakes by the slice as well as cookies, bars, cream puffs, energy bites, coffee cakes, sticky buns, brownies and so much more. We also offer custom birthday cakes.
What are some items or products that readers may be surprised to learn that you carry/offer?
We carry an array of gourmet grocery items—a lot of Italian specialties as well as local products created by local businesses. Our coffee, teas, sauces, seasonings, cheeses and spreads are all products that have been created by local businesses near and dear to our hearts. We love supporting our community when we can.
Tell us about the raw diet and smoked bones for dogs. Explain the importance of not letting anything go to waste.
We hate seeing waste! It’s just something we don’t like to do. We use bones, organs and scrap raw meats to create a special raw dog-food blend. Bones are also smoked and turned into great treats for our furry friends.
Explain the importance of shopping locally, versus in big-box grocery stores.
Supporting your local businesses is vitally important to the health of the community you live in. When you support a local business, you are supporting local jobs, local schools and, by doing so, you’re directly putting money back into your own community. A customer [of ours] once put it best: “Amazon will never care to support your child’s Little League team.”
Tell us a little bit about how your business has adjusted during COVID-19.
COVID-19 has been a very challenging time for everyone. We were deemed essential by Governor Wolf’s mandate and remained open throughout the [pandemic] to serve our community as best as possible. Because of the influx of customers inside our store, we switched over to curbside to keep our employees and customers safe. We take orders over the phone and via email and deliver them to our customers as safely as possible.