Kiolbassa isn’t just a brand name — it’s a family name. And for three generations, that name has been attached to the same thing: sausage made the honest way, in San Antonio, without cutting corners.
Our story begins in 1949, when Rufus and Juanita Kiolbassa opened a small sausage operation on San Antonio’s West Side. It was a modest start — a single location, a family running the day-to-day, and a commitment to doing things the right way rather than the fast way. That same site is still part of our operations today.
When Rufus passed away in 1960, the responsibility of running the company fell to his son, Robert. He kept the business rooted in San Antonio and built it into a name people in the area trusted and asked for by name.
In the late 1980s, Robert’s son joined the company and started from the ground up, working directly with local grocers to get Kiolbassa onto more shelves. That hands-on approach — building relationships one store at a time — is part of why our sausage ended up in kitchens well beyond San Antonio, eventually reaching retailers across the country.
Today, Kiolbassa is led by the third generation of the family, and that matters for a simple reason: when a family’s name is on every package, quality isn’t optional. It’s personal.
We don’t bring up our history because it sounds good on a package. We bring it up because it explains how we still operate. The commitment to premium cuts of meat, real hickory smoke and straightforward ingredients isn’t a new marketing angle — it’s the same standard the company was built on in 1949. We’ve grown, and the way we get sausage to your table has changed, but the basic approach hasn’t: start with quality meat, take the time to smoke it right, and don’t shortcut the process.
Being family-owned means decisions about our products get made by people who grew up around this business, not by a distant corporate office. It’s part of why we can say, honestly, that we make sausage just as our family has done for generations — because we still do.
The next time you pick up a package of Kiolbassa, you’re not just picking up sausage. You’re picking up three generations of one San Antonio family’s work to get it right. We think that’s worth knowing, and it’s a big part of why we do what we do the way we do it.
Search in our interactive map for our slow-crafted Kiolbassa Smoked Meats close to you.
With a mission to Enrich Lives, Kiolbassa proudly supports our community through meaningful programs that provide assistance where it’s needed most.
