Most Interesting People 2015: Penny Barend and Melissa Khoury

Why they're interesting: The two friends are the co-founders of Saucisson, an artisan butchery that sells hand-cured meats and sausages at local farmers markets and places such as the West Side Market, Market at Flying Fig and Platform Beer Co. The 1-year-old business has quickly outgrown its nook at the Cleveland Culinary Launch and Kitchen. Amid the daily grind of processing whole animals, crafting inventive products and hauling their stocked portable coolers throughout town, these femme butchers are looking for storefront space. "It's exciting," says Khoury, "but it makes me want to throw up a bit."

Close to heart: Butchery courses through their veins. Khoury recalls growing up with weekly family jaunts to a Medina butcher. "I'd munch on a smokie while staring at pigs' feet," she says. Barend was a toddler when she began salmon fishing in British Columbia with her grandfather. "I filleted the fish when I was 4," she says.

Marriott rewards: Khoury, a Johnson and Wales University alumna, and Barend, a Culinary Institute of America grad, met in 2006 at a Marriott hotel restaurant in Orlando, Florida, where they tag-teamed the in-house butchery program. "We may be girls, but we're pretty bad ass when it comes to our work," Barend says.

Break it down: They purchase their pork, beef, rabbit and duck mostly from Chardon-based New Creation Farms. The animals are dismantled into anything from liver mousse and duck rillettes to chorizo. "We've created a monster with our beef jerky," Khoury says of their most popular product.

Processing it all: They're scouting space for an intimate neighborhood butchery with a small cafe. "We want it to be a place where people can sit down and eat a meat board, grab a glass of wine or beer and buy your meat for the week," Khoury says. Opening a state-inspected meat processing facility within city limits is also in the works. "Ohio doesn't have a lot of these, and we need this to grow our business, service our farmers, sell to restaurants and do interstate shipping," Barend says.

Living it up: They log about 50 hours a week producing and selling, and are even roommates in a house in Cleveland. "We're often asked if we're sisters," Khoury says. They don the same swine wrist tattoo. These protein purveyors can't imagine doing anything else. "The love and support within this authentic, genuine food scene has been so much fun and rewarding," Barend says.

On the side: Barend is an ordained minister and has married two couples. Khoury's scrapbooking could give Martha Stewart a run for her money. She sands, waxes and torches Saucisson's wood plank booth displays and fashions animal bones into holiday tree ornaments. She's rehabbing an eight-panel window frame and presenting it to a local farmer as a picture frame. "I love me a glue gun," Khoury says.