R&K Sausage has been making smokies, kielbasa and other meats in Cleveland for more than a century. Started by Joseph Radecki in 1917, the family business is now in its fourth generation, run by siblings Catherine Murray, Chris Archacki and Martin Archacki, who took it over from their mother in the 1990s.
The shop started in Slavic Village on Lansing Avenue, where two old houses had been joined together to accommodate the business with Polish and Slovenian roots. The family eventually outgrew that space and moved to its current location on Harvard Avenue. Through the moves and generations, R&K’s smokies have become its calling card — both for people who still live nearby and Clevelanders who moved away.
What’s your earliest memory of the shop?
For the Archacki siblings, R&K was part of growing up.
Their mother worked for their grandfather, and the children were frequently dropped off at the store. They remember aunts, uncles and family friends around the shop, running around the neighborhood and going to church on Lansing Avenue after their mother finished working on Saturdays.
As they got older, some of the siblings helped with the books or worked in the back.
Martin Archacki worked summers during college and eventually stayed with the business. The next generation followed them: Their children, nieces and nephews have all worked at R&K.
What does carrying on the family business mean to you?
It’s difficult for the siblings to separate R&K from their family.
“It’s in your heart. I mean, it really is. It’s more than just — it’s a part of us,” Chris Archacki said.
That attachment extends beyond the owners. R&K has had employees who stayed for 20 or 30 years, and their children sometimes worked there, too. Many were relatives, family friends or people from the neighborhood.
Catherine Murray says she still meets people who tell her an aunt, parent or other relative once worked at R&K. And after more than 30 years running the business, walking away isn’t as simple as retiring from another job.
“It is not like having a job that you go to every day and then go, ‘OK, I am going to retire at the end of the year and walk away,” she said. “There is a lot more to this.”
How important are smokies to R&K’s identity?
Extremely.
Catherine remembers being introduced at a party simply as the woman behind the smokies.She doesn’t mind the association.
“It’s kind of cool to be known as, like, that smokie shop — the smokie lady,” she said.
Their mother took the marketing even further. She carried bags of Smokies to doctors’ appointments and handed them out. The family jokes that the sausage could help her get an appointment — or get the Maple Heights service department moving when she needed something fixed.
R&K’s smokies are made with meat that includes pork hearts. The shop also makes fresh and smoked kielbasa.
How has the business changed?
R&K used to operate more like an old-fashioned butcher shop, where customers could walk in and ask for a steak cut to a particular thickness.
As supermarkets and big-box stores made competing on meat prices more difficult, the family adapted. Prepared foods and catering became increasingly important parts of the business.
The workforce changed, too. Employees who once stayed for decades and often had family or neighborhood connections to R&K have largely retired. The owners say workers now tend to stay four or five years rather than 20 or 30.
Who shops at R&K today?
Some customers have been coming for years. Others have moved away but make R&K a stop when they return to Cleveland.
The shop also gets calls from former Clevelanders living in places such as Florida asking R&K to send them smokies.
And customers come now for prepared meals, like the stuffed cabbage, breaded pork chops, and chicken paprikash made in R&K’s kitchen. Some regulars come every week and buy enough for several meals.
What happened to the Polish funeral luncheon?
Another change came during COVID.
R&K remained open because it was considered an essential food business, but the pandemic wiped out a significant piece of its catering business: funeral luncheons.
R&K had regularly catered gatherings at funeral homes serving Polish families, including at Fortuna and Golubski. When COVID stopped those gatherings, the business disappeared — and never really returned.The catering business also lagged after that time.
The owners think COVID accelerated a larger cultural shift. Families increasingly go to restaurants after funerals, hold smaller celebrations of life or choose cremation rather than the large funeral and luncheon that were once common.
The siblings remember their own father’s funeral, where people gathered, drank and even did shots in the middle of the day.
“It’s a celebration of life,” Martin Archacki said.
What’s next for R&K?
For now: “We’re going to keep trucking along, doing what we do,” Catherine Murray said.
But the family is also trying something new. R&K is inspected by the Ohio Department of Agriculture and is applying for approval to ship its products across state lines.
The owners say they’ve already heard interest from distributors outside Ohio and that state inspectors have encouraged them to pursue interstate sales.
That could give a business built around a Cleveland neighborhood and its immigrant traditions a much larger market — including some of the former Clevelanders already calling home for smokies.
