Royal Food Products has been on a massive roll in recent years—a sausage roll, to be more precise.

This success didn’t come overnight. It is the culmination of more than half a century of hard work and dedication that began when Paul Tomyn started up his small commercial kitchen in 1967 producing sausage rolls for local delicatessens and bakeries in the Edmonton area.

Since that time, Royal Food Products has evolved into a state-of-the-art manufacturing facility with annual production of three million kilograms of sausage rolls for foodservice and retail customers across North America.

“We’ve grown from four employees to over 95 employees now running three shifts a day, five days a week,” says Paul Meyer, president of Royal Food Products and the third generation to lead the family business started by his grandfather.

While the company produces a wide variety of other savory pastries, the sausage rolls are by far Royal Food Products’ bestselling offerings.

“It’s about 98 per cent of our business,” Meyer states. “It’s huge: we pump out hundreds of thousands over a shift.”

The company remained a fairly small producer from 1967 until 2000, when Meyer, his brother and his mother all agreed to expand aggressively.

In 2001, they constructed a federal CFIA (Canadian Food Inspection Agency)-certified production facility (also HACCP– and SQF-certified) with a total of 17,000 square feet of manufacturing space in Edmonton.

“We haven’t looked back since: it’s just been amazing growth,” Meyer says.

In 2004, Meyer bought out his family members and now oversees the entire operation with his wife, Teana.

Another reason production spiked was because the company became an active player in the private-label space, in addition to selling sausage rolls under its house brands, including Royal Food Products and Meyer’s Mighty Fine Foods.

“We’ve become a private-label leader in this category,” Meyer says. “We are in almost every retail chain in Canada.”

The savory pastry sector is a highly competitive business, Meyer relates, and success depends on being able to produce high volumes of products.

“It’s all about increasing volume and maintaining quality,” Meyer says.

Internally, Meyer and his team are constantly researching ways to drive change by investing in new equipment to continually improve processes and remain competitive, so that any additional costs—including the rising price of commodities like beef—don’t get passed on to their customers.

“We want to be competitive, and we also want to look after the end consumer that it’s going to, especially in these times,” Meyer says. “We want to make sure that we’re providing a high-quality product at a great price.”

In addition, Royal Food Products is in constant communication with its customers to ensure the company is always meeting all their needs.

“A huge thing is customer service, filling orders on time, and just keeping a really good communication with our customers,” Meyer says.

“We’re always working with them, always internally bettering ourselves and our company strategies that keep us competitive.”

The company operates two production lines with four different types of packaging offerings: a shrink-wrapped retail deli pack; a pillow pack; individually wrapped pastries for the convenience store clients; and a generic bulk pack.

For most of their packaging technology needs in recent years, Royal Food Products has worked with PLAN IT Packaging Systems of Mississauga, Ont., a leader in primary and secondary packaging manufacturing in Canada with facilities in both Canada and the U.S.

“One example of continuous improvement to stay competitive is collaborating with PLAN IT Packaging Systems to improve the packing portion of our process,” Meyer says. “The equipment we recently purchased has significantly increased our throughput and is helping us maintain our profit margins, while also allowing us to reinvest in our employees and purchase new equipment for the future.”

The producer’s most recent purchase was a MarsCompak vertical form-fill-seal (VFFS) line with sanitary design, featuring a built-in ELITEWEIGH multi-head scale and integrated washdown inclined conveyor.

However, this was not the first time that the two companies worked together.

In 2022, Royal Food Products reached out to PLAN IT Packaging Systems for an automated flow-wrapping line solution for its sausage rolls production to replace its older, less efficient flow-wrapper that was not particularly user-friendly.

“Royal’s initial goal was to reduce labor and improve consistency for their individual Pepperoni Cheese Bread and retail sausage roll products,” explains Mark Evangelista, director of sales for PLAN IT Packaging Systems. “They wanted a reliable, long-term solution that could grow with them.

“At the time, they were new to automation and packaging machinery,” Evangelista notes, “but we delivered a solution that exceeded expectations.”

As Evangelista recalls, the PLAN IT Packaging Systems’ Pack520 flow-wrapper offered Royal Food Products several key features including:

• Servo-driven performance for precise control and long-term reliability;
• User-friendly controls for operators new to automation; robust construction with minimal maintenance requirements;
• Robust stainless-steel configuration for hygiene and durability.

“It was operator-friendly and very easy to use,” Meyer says. “It was a very competitive machine.

“It had all the capabilities that we needed, and because we deal with meat, it needed to have full washdown capabilities.”

Over the next two-and-a-half years, the partnership between the two companies continued to grow, with Royal Food Products recently choosing to invest in the MarsCompak vertical form-fill-seal (VFFS) line.

This investment allowed the company to replace a manual process involving four counters and two sealers.

“Royal needed a compact, high-output system,” Evangelista relates. “We delivered our all-in-one MarsCompak vertical form-fill-seal solution, integrating the ELITEWEIGH multihead scale directly above the bagger.”

As Evangelista reveals, the key features of the MarsCompak VFFS solution include:

• Minimum output of 30 packages per minute (ppm), scalable up to 50 ppm;
• All washdown-rated contact parts;
• IP67-rated conveyors for easy cleaning, critical for the cold environment;
• Compact footprint to fit into the company’s limited production space.

According to PLAN IT, the ELITEWEIGH scale delivers precise weights within grams, minimizing giveaway, while the system’s open architecture is powered by OMRON’s non-proprietary PLCs (programmable logic controllers) for optimal operational flexibility.

The MarsCompak VFFS is also designed for minimal maintenance intervention and maximum uptime, boasting stainless steel construction that is hygienic, durable and compliant with all the critical food safety standards. The flexible packaging for the process is supplied by Canpaco of Woodbridge, Ont.

“Transitioning from manual to automated packaging required a learning curve,” Evangelista recalls.

“We provided four days of hands-on training to ensure Royal Foods’ operators were confident and capable.

“Despite their limited prior experience, the team adapted quickly with our support,” he states.

According to Meyer, Royal Food Products’ latest investment has helped with removing production bottlenecks and opened up new opportunities to expand the company’s product offerings.

“This new system that we’ve just brought in from PLAN IT has really opened up our potential capacity,” Meyer extols, “while also improving our finished product quality and weighing accuracy.

“In late 2026 or early 2027, we may see some new items coming out of Royal Foods into the marketplace,” he adds.

Since the first day that the MarsCompak VFFS solution started up in early September, the difference in production has been impressive, according to Meyer.

“The day we turned it on, we saw a 24 per cent increase in productivity,” Meyer relates.

“Depending on the product, we have seen a 56-to-80 per cent increase in our output with just this system.

“It’s surpassed our target from when we did our initial assessment—it’s been an amazing asset!

“We’re already seeing tweaks that we can do to get that those numbers up even more,” he adds.

Royal Food Products’ popular sausage rolls are made completely in-house from the pastry to the fillings.

After the sausage rolls are processed and frozen, the pastries are sent to an incline conveyor that places them into the ELITEWEIGH scale system, which then deposits the sausage rolls into the MarsCompak VFFS.

“Since the new machine has been implemented, we have better finished weights, less waste, more accurate counts, and easier labour requirements,” Meyer says.

The packaged sausage rolls are then placed in retail boxes using a Consolidated Technologies glue line, sealed and coded with a Hitachi model UX inkjet printer (sold and serviced by Edmonton-based Harlund Industries), placed into master cases, and readied to be shipped to customers.

According to Meyer, one of the biggest challenges in this market is constantly looking for ways to innovate and offer new products that retailers will be willing to place onto their shelves in front of potential customers.

“We’re constantly working on research-and-development to come up with new ideas and new projects,” says Meyer. “Because we deal closely with retailers, it’s primarily all about finding that right niche or that right product that they can get on the shelf.”

So does Meyer see his company working with PLAN IT Packaging Systems in the future? It’s definitely a possibility.

“PLAN IT have been excellent to work with from start to finish,” Meyer asserts. “They’ve got a great support network that is very responsive.

“If there’s a question, you reach out to them, and they get back to you quickly.

“They’ve been a really good partner on this last project we did with them,” Meyer concludes, “and I would be happy to work with them again, no problem.”