Belief and barbecue Near-death experience reframes intersection of family, business for Danny’s Whole Hog founder Made in Manitoba
By: Aaron Epp Posted: 6:07 PM CDT Thursday, Aug. 29, 2024 Last Modified: 10:32 AM CDT Friday, Aug. 30, 2024 Updates

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 29/08/2024 (417 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

If things had gone differently this spring, Danny Kleinsasser would be dead.

The founder of Stony Mountain-based barbecue catering company Danny’s Whole Hog was driving his truck the morning of March 21, when he entered the intersection of Highway 7 and 74 Road North — a crossing he drives through almost every day.

Kleinsasser missed an oncoming semi-truck and his vehicle was struck. He managed to get out of his totalled truck before it went up in flames.

Kleinsasser suffered a broken sternum and ribs. He credits the quick thinking of the semi driver, who swerved to hit the truck’s front end rather than the middle, with saving his life.

“I should not be alive, but God gave me another day,” Kleinsasser says.

While his physical injuries have healed, Kleinsasser has been diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and is still off work.

Kleinsasser takes full responsibility for the accident. It was a wake-up call for the father of six, whose first grandchild was born in January.

“At the end of the day, it makes you think you better slow down.”

It might be the first time Kleinsasser has contemplated slowing down.

He was raised on the Concord Hutterite Colony near Stony Mountain, which is heavily involved in the hog industry. It was a good life, Kleinsasser says, but he and his wife, Jeanette, left in February 2001, because they wanted their children to have educational opportunities beyond what the colony offered at the time.

From a young age, Kleinsasser had a passion for barbecuing and experimenting with recipes.

That interest was further stoked when Kleinsasser and his father, Dan, attended hog industry trade shows in Iowa, Nebraska and Texas. Seeing people barbecuing whole pigs captured the imagination.

A year after leaving the colony, he started Danny’s Whole Hog in a 900-square-foot building next to his house. “It was a hard start. Everything’s a hard start, but I’m a positive thinker. I’m a visionary. I think forward.”

When it opened, the business offered customers the opportunity to barbecue their own pig at home. The purchase of a pig came with a free barbecue rental and instructions for how to use it.

Kleinsasser enjoys preparing food because it makes people happy. He wanted to give customers the chance to do the same.

“I’ll make it so simple for you,” he says. “You can enjoy the fame by cooking the pig and making people happy with food.”

Danny’s still offers whole hog barbecue, but now includes a variety of services. It evolved, Kleinsasser says, because he listened to his customers.

People started asking if Danny’s could barbecue the pig for them; others asked for buns, salads and other sides; others asked for fully catered meals. When people started requesting different meats, Danny’s started offering chicken, turkey and beef.

Along the way, Kleinsasser adopted the slogan, “We’ll bring the flavour,” and slowly became the face of the company.

His infectious personality shines through in the promotional material for Danny’s, which includes photos of Kleinsasser leaning over a prepared meal, smiling widely, with his thumbs raised.

In addition to whole hog barbecue and catering, Danny’s offers drop off meals, pickup meals and a professional cutting and wrapping service for wild game. It sells meat wholesale to food distributors such as Sysco and Pratts, and offers a range of retail products — including ready-to-eat meals, pastries, soups and sauces — in stores and online.

The company’s headquarters on Kleinsasser’s property now encompasses 10,000 sq. ft. It employs about a dozen people full-time and relies on another 35 part-time.

Throughout its peak season in the summer, Danny’s caters around 20 events each weekend, with another 18 to 20 customers picking up meals every weekend that each feed anywhere from 15 to 40 people.

The company has experimented with food trucks and operated a restaurant in the St. James neighbourhood of Winnipeg for about three years starting in 2012, but today Danny’s likes to focus on what it does best: catering.

In 2023, the company served some 80,000 people.

A few of Kleinsasser’s children work for Danny’s. His eldest, Isaiah, 25, has become his right-hand man.

Kleinsasser does his best to pass on the things his father taught him: keep an open mind, keep learning and listen to people. Those lessons, along with his Christian faith, have significantly shaped Kleinsasser’s approach to business.

“When I started this business I always said, ‘God, here I am — it’s all yours,’” says Kleinsasser, who has “Stay humble” tattooed on his right wrist. “I grew this business by faith, and that’s where I am today. It was him, not me. He gave me the power and the wisdom.”

Helping others has always been important to Kleinsasser, who has worked with numerous charitable organizations.

“He’s awesome,” says Judy Richichi, who was the director of development at Siloam Mission in Winnipeg from 2009 to 2019. “He’s humble, kind, gracious, generous and his motivation is service to others and service to God.”

Richichi reached out to Kleinsasser in 2009, and asked if Danny’s would donate meals for 20 volunteers at a Siloam fundraiser. Kleinsasser agreed. It wasn’t long before Danny’s was donating a 300-person meal for the homeless charity’s clients every month.

Richichi says that paved the way for other local businesses to do the same.

“That’s how change happens, that’s how communities succeed — when everyone does their part to make an impact,” Richichi says. “It takes all of us. Whenever you have someone (like Danny who’s) totally bought into that concept, they’re keepers.”

Brenda Bourns, who runs an event production company, agrees. She’s lost count of the number of times she’s hired Danny’s to cater events since meeting Kleinsasser in 2013.

“He’s super dependable and a total rock star,” Bourns says. “The food is always amazing… I can’t say enough great things about Danny. He’s super humble and always community driven.”

Bourns feels a kinship with Kleinsasser because they are driven entrepreneurs and because they both have experienced life-changing setbacks. Bourns lost her right eye in a freak accident while walking her dog four years ago.

Kleinsasser was one of the first people to reach out to her afterwards; she reached out to him after his accident in March.

“We’re all incredibly grateful that he was spared that day because our community would be at such a loss if Danny Kleinsasser wasn’t in it,” Bourns says.

Kleinsasser says he was on autopilot when the accident happened — thinking about his business, thinking about the 84-year-old mother he supports and thinking about his children, two of whom are still in high school.

He’s always tried to prioritize his family, something he has doubled down on since the accident. His father died at 73, something Kleinsasser thinks had to do with his workaholic lifestyle.

Kleinsasser wants to live longer than that. “The perspective of life and family is going to be different for the rest of my life.”

Living with PTSD has given Kleinsasser a better understanding of the mental health struggles others go through. It’s something he hopes to share more about publicly when he’s further along his healing journey.

“I’ll get through it — I’m a positive guy,” he says. “But do I have my hard days? Absolutely (I have) hard days. I understand people that are going through it.”

In the meantime, he and Isaiah continue to run Danny’s, which did record business after COVID-19 pandemic public health restrictions were lifted.

Kleinsasser looks forward to returning to work full-time and being involved with the company’s day-to-day operations until at least 2027. He hopes to retire then — the company will mark its 25th anniversary that year and he’ll turn 65.

His face breaks into that wide smile when he thinks about the synchronicity of those milestones.

“Wouldn’t that be a day to celebrate?”

aaron.epp@freepress.mb.ca