Highway 41 was once a main route between the upper peninsula of Michigan and Miami, running right down Main Street in what is now called the Southside.
That name now finds new life in Link 41, a shop scheduled to begin production of hand-crafted sausages in early March on Main Street.
Its owners say it links the past and future as it occupies a site on the route.
“The food movement is a little of the past, but looking forward to what we should be thinking about,” said owner Trae Moore. “We talked about how to link the urban and the rural and how the urban environment affects the rural by consumption of food, which has a huge impact on the environment around us.”
Mr. Moore, formerly involved in a number of food and farming endeavors in the area, and his business partner, local developer Tom Montague, conceived the idea of a sausage shop two years ago. Since that time, Mr. Moore has taken meat science classes at the University of Iowa at Ames, as well as worked with butchers in Tuscany, Italy. In the meantime, Mr. Montague put his experience to work rehabbing the century-old building on Main Street, an extension of Niedlov’s Breadworks.