HVADC Client: Jacuterie

The first time Jack Peele tried to make English chipolatas with his father, it was a mess.

They stood in the kitchen at his father’s Herondale Farm in Ancramdale, Columbia County, wrestling ground pork through a cut-off soda bottle they’d repurposed as a funnel. The casings split. The seasoning was off.

“It was a disaster,” Peele recalled with a laugh. “We had no idea what we were doing.”

That botched holiday experiment turned out to be the beginning of something: Jacuterie, Peele’s Hudson Valley charcuterie business. As an HVADC Business Technical Assistance client, Peele worked with Berkshire Agricultural Ventures (BAV) and HVADC to rethink his business plan, secure grant funding, and prepare for a major equipment upgrade that’s poised to double his production capacity.

Today, Jacuterie operates from a USDA-inspected facility on Peele’s family’s farm. But the road from soda bottle to stainless steel took more than a decade, and a lot of help along the way.

From Farm Kid to Charcutier

Peele launched Jacuterie in 2012 under Jackiscooking LLC, as an offshoot of his father’s grass-fed livestock operation. The brand name is a play on his first name and the word charcuterie. His dad, English-born, wanted proper British bangers. Local processors offered standard spice blends. That wasn’t good enough.

“I’d gone to culinary school and started developing my own sausage recipes so we could have our own flavors,” Peele said.

At the time, he was living in New York City, sourcing custom spice blends from a small East Village shop and sending them north for production. He taught himself to make fresh sausages, built a curing chamber out of an old refrigerator, and began experimenting with salami and bacon. Later, he completed a short charcuterie program at the French Culinary Institute to refine his craft.

Small-batch experiments led to pop-ups alongside Rory Chase of Chaseholm Farm Creamery. When Peele moved back to Columbia County full-time, he decided to see if charcuterie could carry him.

More than a decade later, it has.

Jacuterie’s British bangers remain its best-seller. But the business has evolved well beyond farmers' markets. Peele works with distributors such as Marty's Local, Farms2Tables, and Adventure in Food, and his products appear in stores across the region. He also ships nationwide.

A Hub for Hudson Valley Farms

While Jacuterie still sells its own line, about 80 percent of Peele’s work now involves crafting custom sausages and cured meats for six to ten regional farms each year.

Instead of offering generic blends, he develops distinct recipes for each client.

“Every farm has its own story and its own way of raising animals,” Peele noted. “I think they should have their own unique sausages, too.”

Smaller farms often lack the volume to access large-scale specialty processors. Peele’s facility gives them a way to add value under their own labels while maintaining identity and quality.

But growth came with pressure. Labor and insurance costs climbed sharply, farmers' market sales that surged during the pandemic later dipped, and equipment aged. Peele needed a clearer path forward.

Technical Assistance, Real Results

The relationship with Berkshire Agricultural Ventures ran deep. BAV’s Local Food Systems Program Manager, Jake Levin, had worked at Jacuterie years earlier before moving into other roles in the regional food system. When BAV identified Jacuterie as a strong candidate for expansion support, Peele recalled a chance meeting with HVADC’s Business Services Coordinator Duane Stanton at Hilltown Pork, a slaughterhouse in Canaan, Columbia County. That meeting became a natural starting point to bring both organizations together.

In early 2024, BAV and HVADC collaborated to fund business technical assistance, including consultants who analyzed Jacuterie’s financials, interviewed customers, and produced a roadmap for the business's future.

“With Jacuterie’s pre-existing connection with BAV and HVADC’s capacity to provide support on the business planning side, the partnership felt natural. The additional expertise supplied by BAV's consultant Food Works Group to assess Jack’s current output and plan for a more efficient future looks to have had a positive impact on his business and I can’t wait to see how it progresses as time passes," said Stanton.

The assessment clarified what to grow and what to scale back.

“It really steered me toward concentrating more on co-packing for other farms,” Peele remarked. “And relying less on farmers' markets.”

"Through our Local Meat Processing Support Program, BAV recognized a pressing need for more co-packing and value-added meat processing in the region,” said BAV’s Levin. “Jack has established a strong, proven business doing exactly that. We wanted to support his expansion because the unique and exciting products he creates are essential to helping other local farms thrive.”

With a revamped business plan in hand and grant-writing assistance from BAV, Peele applied for a Business Builder grant funded by the USDA and sub-awarded by the NASDA Foundation. The process stretched across 2024 and into 2025. Federal budget cuts briefly threatened the award, and a government shutdown delayed the final disbursement. When the funding finally came through, Peele paired it with private financing and a bridge loan from BAV to begin long-awaited upgrades.

The Next Chapter

This winter, Jacuterie temporarily shut down production to make upgrades. Peele redid the floors and put old equipment into storage. New machinery — including a modern sausage stuffer that can automatically portion and link product — is en route from Spain.

With his previous setup, Peele could produce roughly 200 pounds of salami per week. The new system could push that to 400 or even 500 pounds with the same labor and space.

“The time savings is huge,” Peele said. “It frees me up and gives me flexibility to take on more farms.”

“It’s sort of been the dream equipment I’ve wanted for years,” he added.

Once production resumes, he’ll refresh his website and market his co-packing services more actively, something he’s never had to do before.

Paying It Forward

For other agribusiness owners navigating growth, Peele doesn’t hesitate.

“I always refer people to HVADC and Berkshire Agricultural Ventures,” he said. “If you’re trying to figure out how to make the business work — whether that’s a better plan or finding funding — they’re enormously helpful. Their mission is to make the system work.”

Back at the farm, production is set to resume soon. Customers are waiting — some with thousands of pounds of pork in the freezer.

This time, there’s no soda bottle in sight.

From small family farms to large horticultural enterprises, HVADC supports agribusinesses at every stage through Business Technical assistance, loans, grants, and marketing opportunities. Learn more at https://www.hvadc.org/agribusiness-growth