Sausage-making on Valentine’s Day: Holly Bacon’s matchmaking event will add sizzle to your love life

Ellie Vogtherr-Pulford from Holly Bacon presents a heart-shaped sausage ahead of the butchery's sausage-making class for singles on Valentine's Day. Photo / Jack Riddell

• Holly Bacon in Hastings is hosting a sausage-making class for single people on February 14.
• Organiser Ellie Vogtherr-Pulford wants to create a fun, casual environment for matchmaking without pressure.
• The event really needs more single men to join.

For single Hawke’s Bay residents, Valentine’s Day isn’t usually a banger.

While all the couples of the region are off enjoying each other’s company over a meal and drinks, you’re at home eating cold spaghetti from a can in your undies (speaking from past personal experience).

Fortunately, Holly Bacon in Hastings has come to the aid of eligible meat-loving bachelors and bachelorettes by creating a sausage-making class for singles on Friday, February 14.

It promises to be a fun, unique experience that could lead to more than just a sausage to call your own.

Organiser Ellie Vogtherr-Pulford, who runs Holly Bacon alongside her mother Claire, father Neil and sister Lydia, said her family likes a bit of matchmaking and the relaxed atmosphere of a sausage-making course in a butchery, after hours, would be a great place to meet your soulmate.

“There are many places to casually do it, like a bar or something, but a lot of people find that quite awkward,” she said.

“This is just going to be a fun, casual environment – you can come along, there’s no pressure and we’ll teach you how to make some tasty sausages, and then hopefully people can meet and chat and maybe find somebody to see again... Meet over meat, if you will.”

Ellie Vogtherr-Pulford from Holly Bacon presents a heart-shaped sausage ahead of the butchery's sausage-making class for singles on Valentine's Day. Photo / Jack Riddell

She said the Holly Bacon store currently has two regular customers who are both single and staff had been trying to get them together, which helped develop the idea for the Valentine’s Day course.

Attendees at the event will be asked to complete a small questionnaire when they book their tickets, and the family will try their best to couple everyone with their best match.

At the event, a table full of sausage ingredients will be laid out for the singles, who will mix them together, give their creation a taste and see what works.

There will be no alcohol at the event due to Holly Bacon not having a liquor licence, but Vogtherr-Pulford points out there are many fine drinking establishments nearby where winning couples can carry on their conversations after their lesson.

Although they have had a few bookings for the event already, what they desperately need is for more men to sign up.

“We are at looking at getting a few more blokes in, so if you are a single bloke, you’re into sausages and you’re interested in meeting someone new, sign up,” she said.

“I think a lot of women are really open to trying new things to meet people, so we’re thinking we’ll get quite a few women.

“A few more blokes would be good.”

If the event works well, Holly Bacon hopes to run more singles’ classes in the future, and even classes for those already coupled up.

Even though sausages are not typically paired with romance, Vogtherr-Pulford said the meat could be an amorous meal and a great way to add some sizzle to your relationship.

“If somebody’s put in the effort to make one for you, it’s very romantic,” she said.

Jack Riddell is a multimedia journalist with Hawke’s Bay Today and spent the last 15 years working in radio and media in Auckland, London, Berlin and Napier. He reports on all stories relevant to residents of the region.