Meat markets stake survival on prime products, superior service

When was the last time you brought home hamburger freshly ground and wrapped in butcher paper?

Independent service meat markets, where butchers cut, trim and grind meats to order, are a rare breed. Like other independent retailers, they must compete against big-box stores like Costco, supermarket chains and even specialty stores such as Whole Foods Market, which include service meat departments.

When today's consumers consider where to spend their hard-earned cash, convenience and price often trump service.

But meat markets remain. Many have been around for generations. Their proprietors say they are thriving, though they acknowledge the business has changed.

Service drives their success as much as product. That means passing along recipes and cooking tips or offering marinated, smoked and stuffed cuts to save customers prep time at home. Some are specializing in all-natural, organic, kosher or halal meats — the latter two handled according to prescribed religious guidelines — because that's what more consumers want.

Family business

Some in the trade think meat cutters are an endangered species as meatpacking houses do more and more of the cutting for chain stores, and machines do the packaging. But those who started in their teens as "clean-up kids" and learned butchering from their fathers and grandfathers find it hard to do anything else.

Last year, when Crystal Meats closed after 57 years at Pike Place Market, two former employees, Shawn Beresford and Ted Coffman, thought long and hard about whether they wanted to stay in the business.

"We love cutting meat," says Beresford, who works with the knives his grandfather, an Iowa meat cutter, used.

The pair opened Shawn and Ted's Quality Meat Market in Renton in December, selling only all-natural beef, pork and chicken. They also have a smokehouse. Using family recipes, they hickory-smoke sausage, Canadian bacon, chicken and turkey breast as well as pepperoni, an item so popular they move 150 pounds of it a week.

The store is set up so customers can see how everything is handled. "We do all our work in front of the customers," says Beresford. "People ask a lot of questions, and I spend a lot of time talking to customers. They want to know how we do things and be educated about what they are buying."

Rick Friar, owner with his wife, Julie, of A & J Meats on Queen Anne, does the same. "We have to teach people how to cook and give them recipes," he says. But otherwise, he thinks little has changed about the business since his father opened A & J 54 years ago.

They still make all their own products, from dry-aged beef to lunchmeat, sausages and hot dogs. "Mass-produced products are driving customers to us," Friar says.

Don Kuzaro Jr.'s dad and uncle founded Don and Joe's Meats at Pike Place Market 36 years ago. Kuzaro says he's been encouraged over the last 10 years by young people's interest in cooking and fine ingredients. "And it's been nice to have people actually living back downtown who can walk here and shop here regularly," he says.

Kuzaro notes a big interest in natural meats and hopes that, as demand increases, prices will come down. "We have a lot of low-income clientele, and we have to have a mix of products to meet everyone's needs."

He says people often are surprised at the service they get. "We'll cut the top sirloin into strips for your stroganoff. That's what we mean by service."

Jeff Green, who with his wife, Trisha, owns B & E Meats & Seafoods, says, "Stores like Whole Foods and Metropolitan Markets are only doing what the independents have been doing for years." Mostly, however, he sees a trend toward less service. "People seem willing to give up the service for the savings."

His business has grown since Green's father opened the Burien shop in 1958, branching out into seafood and custom smoking and opening a second shop in Des Moines.

But he believes service keeps them competitive. "I'm well aware that our customers are also going to supermarkets or shopping at Costco, and they can easily buy their meat at those places. So if they're coming to us, we want to make sure that extra stop is worthwhile. We not only sell them the meat, we tell them how to cook it; we have pre-seasoned, marinated cuts that can go right into the oven and we tell them what to serve with it."

In Columbia City, James Ackley still spreads fresh sawdust on the floor at Bob's Quality Meats to keep it from getting slick. "It's not high-tech, but it works," says Ackley, 52 and a fourth-generation butcher who stuffed sausages as a 6-year-old at his father's shop in West Seattle. He grew up to be a fruit farmer, but in 1997 bought his father's last remaining store and runs it with his son, Abraham.

"When my father opened this shop in the 1970s, people told him it would never work in this area," Ackley recalls. "But my dad always said people want to serve their families the best they can get. Quality sells wherever you are."

Tough to break into

Opening a meat market requires a steep initial investment in machinery and equipment. That, coupled with small margins, long hours and physically demanding work, might be why there are so few newcomers to the business.

"You really almost have to buy an existing business, or the cost is prohibitive," says A & J's Friar.

The former Pike Place Market home of Crystal Meats was vacant for most of a year before Semsi Fero hung his shingle there. He's gotten three bouquets of flowers from customers since he opened in October.

"In 30 years of business I've owned three stores, and nobody ever brought me flowers," laughs the 52-year-old Fero, who moved here with his family from his native Turkey in 1992. Since then he has run the meat department for a local supermarket chain, but he's long wanted to open his own shop.

Fero's Meat Market stocks a full range of meat and game, including free-range lamb, beef and goat, organic chicken and beefalo, but its specialty is halal meats.

Slaughtered according to Islamic tradition, the animals are quickly killed and scrupulously bled, which Fero says results in a higher-quality, tastier meat. Eventually he hopes to add organic beef and kosher meats to the roster.

Mike Lawing, a meat cutter for 17 years first at Albertson's, then at Crystal Meats and now at Fero's, is hoping the new venture succeeds. "The difference between a supermarket and an independent market like this is that my customers are my family. It's a living, breathing force in the community. You become part of people's lives."

Providence Cicero: providencecicero@aol.com