A brazen overnight theft has shaken one of Alberta's most beloved family businesses. Stawnichy's Mundare Sausage, the legendary Ukrainian food maker that has defined the town of Mundare for nearly 70 years, was targeted by two thieves who smashed through its storefront late Wednesday night—marking the business's first break-in in its entire history.
The culprits were in and out in seconds, making off with just $80 in coins from the cash register. But their destruction told a different story: between $4,000 and $5,000 in damage to the storefront glass and door.
A Legacy Business Under Attack
Kyler Zeleny, the store's assistant general manager and a fourth-generation sausage-maker in the Stawnichy family, was jolted awake just before midnight when the store's alarm triggered. He rushed in to find surveillance footage of two masked thieves caught red-handed.
"It's just so unfortunate in the sense that there's so much work that has to be done for so little profit for criminals to kind of do this stuff," Zeleny said. "It costs us a lot of time and energy that we didn't need to do. We would rather just be making good products, interacting with our customers, doing our job … [and] not having to board up windows at 4 a.m."
Located 80 kilometres east of Edmonton, Mundare has earned its reputation as Alberta's "sausage capital," anchored by the iconic 13-metre-high sausage monument—a landmark created decades ago by Zeleny's grandfather, Edward Stawnichy.
Quick Recovery Stuns Community
What might have crippled a smaller business didn't slow down this family operation. After speaking with RCMP around 1 a.m., Zeleny and his father—a farmer with access to plywood and two-by-fours—spent four hours improvising repairs. By 3 p.m. Thursday, the store had reopened with a new door, a replacement cash register, and barely a trace of the previous night's crime.
"You can come in five hours after we had opened—the day after the break-in—and you possibly wouldn't understand that there even was a break-in," Zeleny said, reflecting on the staff's resilience.
A Reward for Justice
The shop's owners aren't taking this lying down. They've posted surveillance video online and are offering an unusual but fitting reward: 100 rings of their world-famous sausage to anyone who provides solid information leading to the identification of the thieves.
RCMP confirmed they responded to the business alarm at 11:45 p.m. Wednesday and are investigating the incident. Residents with information are encouraged to contact local police or reach out to the store directly.
For a business that has survived recessions, changing markets, and the rise of big-box competition, a smash-and-grab feels almost routine to the Stawnichy family. What sets them apart isn't just their sausage—it's their determination to keep serving customers, one ring at a time.
This story was adapted from reporting by CBC News Edmonton.