Largo store specializes in German meats, pastries, and beer

To help ease her homesickness for Germany, Marie Heine often stops at the International Wursthaus in Largo.

"We come here seeking comfort in pflaumenkuchen, which is plum cake,'' said Heine, a Redington Shores winter resident.

For the last 10 years, offering customers like Heine a bit of comfort from Deutschland has been the business strategy for store owners Anja and Karin Gauggel. Along with pflaumenkuchen, the mother-daughter team sells an assortment of German strudels, breads, salamis, hams, cheeses and other goodies.

The Gauggels relocated to the United States from Stuttgart in 1998. They opened for business one year later.

"We use importers from the same region we lived in, which is the Black Forest region,'' Anja Gauggel said.

"Although every (grocery) store calls some ham Black Forest ham, we have real Black Forest ham," she said. "The pine flavor comes from it being smoked with wood from the Black Forest. It's not sweet. It's smoky.''

International Wursthaus also makes German sausage in the kitchen of the store. In December, the Gauggels have prepared 900 pounds of sausage each week.

Every Wednesday, they separate and grind the different meats. They add the imported spices and send it through the stuffing machine to be put in the casings.

"Business has been hard because of the economy," said Anja, who received her butchery certificate at a butcher school in Sigmaringen, Germany. "But we know the snowbirds are coming back and Christmas is always busy.''

The women also keep German newspapers and magazines like Neue Post, which is filled with celebrity gossip, on their shelves. And to make any German meal complete, the store stocks a selection of German beer.

As she held up a sample of the Hofbraeuhaus beer, Gauggel pointed out the large container.

"All our German beer comes in half-liter, big bottles like this,'' she said. "In Germany, you don't make small bottles of beer.''