Poets often compare recipes to small poems—they keep what kept us. The former CEO of Johnsonville Ralph Stayer spun the craft that sustained him as a child into America’s largest private sausage brand, selling his family recipe brats in nearly 50 countries.
At his core, ‘The Sausage King’ is the son of a butcher. His parent’s heirloom bratwurst, shaped by their Austrian and Slovenian heritage, launched the global brand in 1945, starting as a small-town butcher in Johnsonville, Wisconsin. After college, Ralph joined the family business and encouraged his parents to move from retail to wholesaling while keeping the person-to-person connection at the center of the company.
Ralph takes the same personal approach with his philanthropy. “My job is to make sure every person I’m connected with has the best opportunity and the encouragement needed to develop themselves fully,” he says.
He and his wife, Shelly, have lived in Port Royal for nearly 16 years and have been trustees of Naples Children & Education Foundation (NCEF) for the last three. Earlier this year, they served as chairs for Naples Winter Wine Festival (NWWF), which raised an unprecedented $33 million—$8 million more than the previous year. No one was more shocked than the Stayers, who had assumed the festival’s 24th would be an off year, with patrons eyeing the 25th anniversary. “But then, the most wonderful thing happened—we started calling people for help, and every person we contacted said yes,” Ralph says, his voice warbling. “It’s one of the warmest feelings I’ve ever had in my heart.”
Before becoming involved with NCEF, Ralph asked the organization various pointed questions, ensuring that the good work was more than just a good feeling. He started with the nonprofit’s impact on Collier County’s juvenile arrest rates. “We discovered the rate dropped from 2010 to 2023 by 50 percent,” he says. “If you extrapolate that across the increase in population, those are hard numbers.”
In the coming years, he envisions working with other communities on roadmaps for verifiable change. “I don’t have many years left, and I intend to spend them doing as much good as possible,” says Ralph, who also consults for NCH Healthcare System and his wife’s Shelly Stayer Shelter for Victims of Human Trafficking & Domestic Violence.
His empowerment-based business model is outlined in his bestseller, Flight of the Buffalo, as well as in the Harvard Business Review article, “How I Learned to Let My Workers Lead,” which remains one of the journal’s 100 most reprinted essays. “I’ve sold a lot of sausages, sure, but being able to rally others around a singular principle—we don’t use the people to build the business; we use the business to build the people—changed the workplace for millions and gave them a voice,” Ralph says. “That’s something.” —C.J.