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San Francisco’s Neighborhood Butcher

Avedano’s Holly Park Market preserves the art of butchering by hand-carving locally sourced lamb and grass-fed beef, and also offers a selection of specialty foods from butter made at a century-old Bay area creamery to chocolate and shortbread from nearby producers.

If you followed conventional wisdom, Avedano’s Holly Park Market should probably be out of business by now. The three owners of this independent San Francisco meat market and specialty food shop did absolutely nothing by the book. The partners had no retail experience, next to no start-up money and a business plan they wrote in two weeks. They opened a shop with carriage-trade prices in a working-class neighborhood in 2007. And then the recession hit. Would anyone have voted them most likely to succeed?

Yet two-and-a-half years into the enterprise, the store is thriving and garnering national press. The New York Times showcased Avedano’s butchering classes in a high-profile story on do-it-yourself butchering, and the shop has been featured in GQ, the style-setting men’s magazine. “Tourists are coming here,” says partner Angela Wilson, shaking her head in amazement.

Given the outcome, it makes sense to ponder what the owners did right. Perhaps Avedano’s unlikely success is simply that they saw a need in their own neighborhood and chose to fill it. In this age of the locavore, the merchants who prosper may be those with a local bent.

The Concept: A Meat Market with a Difference

Wilson, Melanie Eisemann and Tia Harrison initially planned to open a restaurant together (all had foodservice experience), but when a location that had housed a long-shuttered meat market in their Bernal Heights neighborhood became available, they shifted gears. San Francisco had plenty of restaurants, they reasoned, but few old-fashioned butchers. For Bernal Heights residents, high-quality meat was a 20-minute drive away.

So, the vintage neon sign outside the building transitioned from Cicero’s Meats to Avedano’s Meats, named for Tia’s grandmother, a first-generation Italian-American. The Avedano family had settled in San Francisco just days before the legendary 1906 earthquake, so the name had local resonance. The shop still had a spacious wooden walk-in refrigerator (ideal for dry-aging meat), a 20-foot meat case, and the massive hanging scale that butchers use for weighing carcasses.

With $75,000 from a home-equity line of credit, the partners cleaned up, painted and installed new lighting, then opened the doors as a meat market with a difference. “We’re the only butcher store in the city to break down carcasses in-house and use only hand tools—no electric tools, no band saw,” says Eisemann. “We are preserving the art of butchering, a disappearing trade.”

Harrison, chef and co-owner of the San Francisco Italian restaurant Sociale, had some butchering skills and was initially the shop’s meat maven. She has stepped back now because of her restaurant responsibilities, and an expert part-time butcher now breaks down the lamb, pork and grass-fed beef that the shop purchases from local growers and ranchers.

One-Stop Local Shopping

The product mix is local, first and foremost. Seafood comes from a supplier specializing in sustainably caught or farmed fish. Pastured chickens from nearby Soul Food Farm have a cult following at $8 a pound; dark-meated poulet rouge chickens from Field to Family, another Northern California farm, provide a relatively more affordable choice at $3.95 a pound. A five-foot refrigerated case holds Gilt-Edge butter from a century-old San Francisco creamery, as well as deluxe French and Italian butters; Bellwether Farms yogurts from neighboring Sonoma County; raw milk Italian and California cheeses; organic Bionade sodas; and fresh pasta from a local supplier.

“We’re almost a one-stop shop, with milk and eggs, cheese and fresh bread,” says Eisemann, the store’s buyer. “We’ve tried to set it up like a European-style market, where you come daily to get your fresh meat and produce. I grew up in Europe and it left a big impact on me.”

Lacking refrigerated space, Eisemann focuses her produce selection on less perishable basics like onions, potatoes, garlic, root vegetables, leeks and lemons. The reach-in refrigerated case might hold a couple of seasonal selections, like purple cauliflower and bagged wild arugula.

Wooden shelves display specialties such as California olive oils and honeys from Katz and Company; Rustichella pasta and Italian rice; organic dried lentils and chickpeas; capers, anchovies, tinned tomatoes and Sardanelli oil-packed tuna—the ingredients for a home-cooked, if high-end, Italian meal. Rather than try to compete with the full-scale independent grocery store down the block, Eisemann looks for unusual and giftable food products, like Calabrian figs in syrup. “I have rotating things,” she says. “San Francisco being a foodie town, the shoppers here are always looking for new items.”

From the shop’s modest kitchen, cooks prepare a different takeout entrée each day—typically, homestyle foods such as lasagne, pulled pork, shepherd’s pie, braised short ribs, fish chowder or fried chicken. On Sundays, one of Avedano’s cooks makes Yucatan-style tacos with pickled red onions and handmade tortillas, a specialty that some San Franciscans drive across town to get. “We’re not buying ingredients to make these things,” says Wilson. “Our meat case is informing what we make.” Along with the panini program, the prepared entrées help keep waste under one percent.

The store’s pressed sandwiches ($6.85) draw lunchtime lines but are arguably too successful, says Wilson. Although they are a good outlet for meat-case items that need to be sold, they are labor intensive, and the lines can scare away customers who come in for steaks—a more profitable sale.

Sustainably Minded Shoppers

Located in the city’s southeastern quadrant, the Bernal Heights neighborhood is more gritty than glamorous, but its relatively affordable homes are attracting young families. Isolated by its hilly geography, it’s “like a small country town,” says Wilson. Cortland Avenue is the neighborhood’s main retail thoroughfare, with about three blocks of cafes, bookstores, dry cleaners and other commercial activity.

“There are 28,000 people in this zip code who can walk here,” says Wilson, analyzing the location’s strengths. “Almost everybody who lives on the hill is coming to this street to do something.”

She continues, “Most of our customers are the 10 percent of people willing to pay extra for meat and fish raised sustainably. People who don’t care will come in here and say they can get the same thing elsewhere for one-third the price.”

Off-duty chefs patronize the store for their home cooking because the quality is comparable to what they’re accustomed to, Wilson notes. And the high prices don’t deter a core group of patrons who believe in supporting neighborhood merchants. But these key shoppers take pampering. “They like being remembered,” says Eisemann. “We try to learn their names and know something about them beyond their being a customer.”

For now, marketing is all word of mouth, say the partners. They hired professional public-relations help for the first year, but now rely on customers to spread the word. Fortunately, several writers live in the neighborhood and know a good story when they hear one. Three young women running a butcher shop does command attention, and their commitment to local and sustainable products suits the progressive neighborhood. “We did the organic, free-range thing because we thought it was right,” notes Wilson, “but it has turned out to be timely.” |SFM|

Janet Fletcher is the weekly cheese columnist for the San Francisco Chronicle and the author of Cheese & Wine: A Guide to Selecting, Pairing and Enjoying.

Avedano’s Holly Park Market
235 Cortland Ave., San Francisco, CA 94110
415.285.MEAT, avedanos.com

Date opened: July 2007
Weekly sales: $16,000
Average transaction: $28
Customers per day: 150
Employees: 9; mostly part time
Footprint: Roughly 375 square feet of selling space, plus another 1,000 square feet for food preparation, butchery and refrigerated storage. A private room can accommodate parties up to 25 (seated) or 40 (standing).
Bestseller: Soul Food Farm eggs at $8.95 a dozen. “We can’t keep them in stock,” says partner Melanie Eisemann.
Category surprise: Sweets, like locally made Poco Dolce chocolates and Clairesquares shortbread. “I can’t believe all the chocolate we sell at a butcher shop,” says Eisemann. “People come in just for the treats.”
Loyalty program: Customers receive a punchcard, punched whenever they spend more than $25 per visit. After six punches, they get $10 off. The incentive motivates many customers to add to their purchase.
Bright idea: Butchering classes, taught by partner Tia Harrison on Sundays. The hands-on classes, limited to seven people, sell out at $300 a person.