The Star Butchers of White Gold Are Back With a New Line of Sausages

Star butchers Jocelyn Guest and Erika Nakamura are back — this time with a line of packaged sausages set to debut in New York City. Their new company J&E Small Goods launches this week with natural, uncured, and fully cooked sausages. To start, hot dogs, kielbasa, and bratwurst will be available online and at Mekelburg’s in Brooklyn.

“A lot of people look at this and are like, ‘Huh? This is what you guys are doing?’ Because it’s not as sexy as being able to stroll into a butcher shop and be treated a certain way,” Nakamura says.

It’s certainly a departure from their last NYC venture. Guest and Nakamura made their names here at the now-closed Upper West Side butcher shop White Gold, which they opened in 2016 with April Bloomfield and Ken Friedman. But when 18-hour days proved unsustainable, especially with a baby on the way, the duo began to examine ways to make changes to their career.

“We set out to be butchers because we want to change the way people eat and how agriculture is done in America. How do you do that from behind one little meat counter?” Nakamura says. “On a political level, this really allows us to have access to such a larger audience.”

Fred & Elliot Photography for J&E Small Goods [Official Photo]

The decision to pivot also happened to coincide with the explosive sexual misconduct accusations against Friedman. Guest and Nakamura say they began to explore starting this company before that, but the timing was certainly convenient in light of the scandal. Nakamura says that they had heard “rumblings” of the problems, but they they “always had blinders up in a lot of ways,” focusing more on the shop.

“It was important for us to protect our safe space on the Upper West Side, and we did that, and I think that was nice and that’s all there is to it,” she says.

Now, a year out from leaving, the business and life partners are set up for what they hope to be national meat domination that helps change current agricultural practices. They’re set up with local farmers for meat, a local processing plant, and have distributors working on getting the product into more and more stores.

J&E Small Goods [Official Photo]

All of their product stands up to their very-high standards: It’s from local farms, has no nitrates or nitrites, and the ingredient list is simply pork and spices. It’s similar to other local butchers such as Meat Hook and Belcampo, who have the same approach to butchery and packaged meat.

Different, though, is the very bright packaging courtesy of former White Gold clients and NYC design firm Hungry Studio. The white-and-pastel branding was very intentionally designed to stand apart from the traditionally darker-colored cured meat packaging currently on shelves, the duo says.

They’ve already started thinking about their next products, too, likely sliced roast beef, bacon, and pastrami. They hope for those to hit shelves in eight to 10 months, and in the meantime for their sausages to hit more and more stores. For now, it’s one step at a time to work up to a larger goal.

“I want to get this shit in schools and hospitals,” Guest says. “That’s my end game.”