Meet the Woman Who Runs This 99-Year-Old Local Sausage Company

“When I first took over, every phone call I'd receive would say, ‘I’m looking for the owner, is he there?’ They would always act so surprised that there was a woman in charge in the meat business,” recalls Diana Payne, owner of Canino's Sausage Company.

Known to many as the Sausage Queen of Denver, Payne has been the sole owner of Canino’s since 1989, but the business goes back much further than that.

Joseph and Lena Canino started selling sausages at the corner of West 35th Avenue and Navajo Street in the 1920s after Joseph bought the apartment building and attached storefront for $3,500. At the time, they called their business the Navajo Meat Market, and they used a spice blend recipe gifted from Joseph's mother, who brought it to Colorado from Calabria, Italy. The operation was renamed Canino’s in 1957.

While Lena’s husband was the owner of the company, according to her grandchildren, it was Lena who spent her days blending spices by hand and drawing in crowds by standing on the street with hot and mild sausage links draped around her as she announced to the neighborhood that food was ready.

Word spread quickly among the once-large Italian population that surrounded Mount Carmel, and Lena garnered a reputation for being a kind soul who treated everyone as family and would never allow anyone to go hungry, whether they were from the neighborhood or not.
It’s a mantra that Diana sticks with to this day. In 1988, she and her husband, Mike, purchased the business from Lena's grandson, Joe Tarantino, in 1988. Mike and Joe had worked closely In the plant since 1970, when Joe bought the business from his grandfather. Tragically, Mike Payne died only a year later, in 1989.

Determined to keep her husband's legacy alive, Diana went to the factory the day after her husband’s funeral and began learning everything there was to know about making and selling the spicy links.

Over the years, she worked to get the product into large chains such as Costco and Sam’s Club. “We would bring the grocers new product, and they would say, ‘Okay, what do you want to remove, then?’ You're up against these big brands like Johnsonville, who have a giant bank to take risks and to pay for end caps, and there’s us just fighting for a small presence,” Diana recalls.

Today, Canino’s still operates with a small team — just thirteen employees. “I have some of the longest-tenured employees in the city,” Diana says. “They don’t ever want to leave. We are a little family here.”

Even with encroaching developments in the area, Payne says she has no plans to sell the building or the business. “I don’t know what I would even do. I like being here and having something to do. It keeps my brain active,” she says of the idea of retirement.
Canino's currently offers nine varieties of sausage links, and while it doesn’t plan to offer any meatless varieties, it does use reduced-fat meat as well as recipes with less sodium than other brands, Diana notes. There are also no artificial preservatives or food coloring, and the production facility has no freezers on site, only two walk-in coolers. The plant, a former sheet metal factory that Diana’s late husband and brother helped remodel for sausage production, is small, and it operates quickly.

“We really don’t have a lot of room here,” Diana notes. “Charlie, the plant manager, who has been here since 1992, comes in at 3 a.m. every morning to start production. We make the sausages, case them, put labels on them and try and get them out to the markets as soon as possible.”

“People cook a lot of pasta in the winter, so our Italian sausage is more popular” when it’s cold out, she continues. “But people like to grill our bratwursts more,” so those sell more in the summer. Other Canino’s offerings include German breakfast sausage, chorizo and spicy Cajun — though it doesn’t sell hot dogs. “I just don’t consider them a sausage,” Diana jokes. “They just have a completely different flavor profile.”

These days, she runs the day-to-day operations with her daughter-in-law, director of operations Michelle Payne, who has been with Canino's since 2001.
It’s become harder for Canino’s fans to find its products in recent years with the loss of two big accounts: Bonnie Brae Tavern, which used the sausages for its menu but closed in 2022, and Sam’s Club, which stopped carrying Canino’s bratwurst when it started making its own.

Sam’s Club does still carry Canino’s mild and hot Italian sausage. Its products can also be found at Safeway and Walmart, as well as on the menu at restaurants like Billy's Gourmet Hot Dogs on Larimer Street and GeJo's Original Italian Restaurant & Lounge in Centennial.

“I want people to know that they can call us here or send us an email, and we will help them get what they are looking for,” Michelle notes. “The loss of Bonnie Brae was upsetting; we worked with them forever.”

Canino's also used to be a staple at the annual Italian festival in Belmar, which hasn’t taken place since the pandemic. But Diana, Michelle and their family are planning to throw a party of their own next year to celebrate Canino’s 100th anniversary and the many old-school fans that continue to keep the business going.

Canino’s Sausage Company is located at 4414 Jason Street. For more information, visit caninosausage.com, call 303-455-4339 or email [email protected].