Keeping food on the table

It wouldn’t be summer in Alberta without Spolumbo’s Italian sausages on the barbecue or on the menu at events across the province.

Three childhood friends and former Calgary Stampeder football players – and sons of Italian immigrants - started Spolumbo’s in 1991, with a plan to supply restaurants and grocery stores across the province with high quality, preservative-free Italian sausages.  

But the partners also wanted to be able to serve the lunch crowd directly. To do that, they had to stay very clear on the rules of competition in the food business.

“We have one shop here in Inglewood that supplies very simple fare. There’s a reason for that,” says Tom Spoletini, the president of Spolumbo’s. “I don’t think our deli bothers our wholesale customers at all; but if we started opening up shops right next to restaurants that we supply, I think that would bother them a whole bunch.”

In recent years, Spolumbo’s started supplying a new wholesale client: food service companies that feed oil and gas workers staying in camps.

“They budget a kilo of meat per man, per day, and we supplied 155 grams, that’s one sausage per man,” he says. It was a great piece of business for the wholesaler, easily matching, even surpassing, its big summertime season for sales. 

But the camp contracts started drying up when the drilling stopped. “For a little company like ours in the middle of Inglewood (a neighbourhood in central Calgary) to supply 155 grams of product to camps in the north country when they’re drilling, imagine who else it affects?” says Spoletini. “We’re at the bottom of the totem pole. You could go to the stratosphere on how many businesses that affected.”

Spoletini says a strong energy sector keeps food on the table all over the province. “It touches us all, absolutely. I think that, in all walks of life, the oil industry touches us all in some way,” he says.

“One of the spin-offs for the Alberta economy is the vast research and development work in the oil patch,” says Spoletini. “They spend a lot of money on technology. And, the better the technology gets, the more it’s sold worldwide,” he says.  

“Who would have ever thought we could get oil out of dirty sand? That to me is mind boggling, and they have different techniques for doing it now,” says Spoletini. “That’s the use of the technology that’s being developed here in Alberta because of our oil and gas industry.”

There is another impact of the energy industry that Spoletini doesn’t think is well- recognized across Alberta. A huge supporter of community and university sports, the former professional football player sees plenty of gymnasiums, sports arenas and programs for local athletes that are funded by energy companies. 

“I don’t think oil and gas companies get enough credit on a community basis as they deserve,” he says. “I don’t think a lot of people know the impact of how generous these major oil companies are.”

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