Daphne Jones

Daphne Jones was the president and chief executive of Glorious Malone's Fine Sausage, Inc., the Milwaukee company famous for its hog head cheese, a Southern style delicacy her mother began making in the family's kitchen decades earlier. For nearly two decades Jones led the business, carrying forward a recipe and a legacy built by her parents, George and Glorious Malone, and turning a small neighborhood operation into a nationally shipped, award winning product.

Jones took over day to day leadership of the company in 2006 and became its sole owner in 2007 after the death of her mother, Glorious Malone, who had started the business in 1961 and was recognized as one of the first Black women in the country to hold a state meat inspection license. Under Daphne Jones, the company's name changed to Glorious Malone's, both to honor her mother and to put a spotlight on what Jones liked to call the company's glorious product. The business grew from a corner store in Milwaukee's Harambee neighborhood into a facility on West Walnut Street that produced roughly 1,500 pounds of head cheese a week, shipped to customers around the country.

Jones was known in Milwaukee as the steward of one of the city's few Black and woman owned manufacturing businesses, and she worked to widen its reach beyond longtime local customers into gourmet restaurants, delicatessens, and specialty grocers. She partnered with institutions including BMO Harris as the company looked to expand, and she spoke often and warmly in interviews about introducing new audiences to a food she described as a gourmet pork delicacy made from a recipe passed down in her own family. She was proud that the business continued to operate as a family concern even as it grew.

Daphne Jones died on Monday, October 19, 2026, at her home in Milwaukee, surrounded by family. She was 76. Her death followed an extended illness related to heart disease. News of her death was shared publicly on October 22, 2026, through a statement from her family and in a press release distributed on her company's behalf, which was reported by Urban Milwaukee and BizTimes Milwaukee. The family's statement said Glorious Malone's Fine Sausage would continue to operate into the future as a family owned and family led company, a direct continuation of the path Jones herself had set after her mother's death.

Tributes to Jones in the hours after her death focused on her role in keeping a piece of Milwaukee's Black business history alive and thriving, and on her personal warmth in talking about a product that, by her own account, could strike newcomers as unusual until she won them over. Funeral and memorial arrangements had not been publicly announced as of this writing.