Great service and good meat equal loyal customers
Unless you're a vegetarian, the smell of a perfectly grilled steak is enough to send your taste buds into overdrive. If your passion for meat transcends the single serving and you've had some experience slaughtering and dressing beef, pork, lamb, chicken and other delicacies, there's probably a meat market business in your future. Learning butcher meat is a trade best learned at the side of a professional, but you'll probably need some help putting together the business side of your venture. Peruse tips in this article and you'll never again hear the question "Where's the beef?" It will be artfully arranged in refrigerated cases at the butcher shop with your name written above the door.
Instructions
1. Write a meaty business plan. Commit to paper your vision for opening, operating, running, funding and advertising your butcher shop. Figure out which competitors are close enough to be problems for you and your sales; include supermarkets, small grocery stores, other meat markets, delicatessens and big box stores. See how they operate, compare the prices each charge and keep these averages on the forefront of your brain as you move toward your goal.
2. Find suppliers. You may be in a position to buy directly from farmers if you live in an area that makes this type of direct purchasing the best and most cost-effective option. If you're located in an urban setting, researching and comparing costs and services of meat wholesalers and distributors are more logical options. Be forewarned: your margin will increase as a direct result of buying your meat from an intermediary, but on the other hand, distributors can get you cuts of meat that local farmers and ranchers might not be able to offer.
3. Follow through with the facet of your business plan for obtaining funding to start-up and maintain your meat market for at least a year until your business is established. If personal financing isn't an option, apply for a loan at a bank with which you do business, turn to a credit union for help or consider a second mortgage on your home if you've enough equity. A less-desirable funding source -- especially if you want to control every aspect of your meat market -- is to find a silent partner.
4. Determine your start-up expenses. If you're opening in a shop that previously served as a meat market, freezer and refrigeration cases should already be in place. Starting from the ground up? Shop and compare commercial suppliers to obtain these essentials. Additionally, buy as much insurance as your business broker recommends so you are fully prepared for any type of catastrophic, meat-related event.
5. Outfit your meat market and design the space so meat cutting and preparation areas are as spacious and well-appointed as space allows. You'll need cutting-block counters, racking units for commercial knives and cleavers, professional meat grinders and either a computer system or a cash register for ringing up sales. If your budget allows, opt for a computer and add software to tally and sort expenses to speed up accounting and bookkeeping tasks.
6. Connect with local health department and government agencies to ascertain the kinds of documentation required to open your meat market business. Apply for these permits and licenses and, if possible, invite a member of the local board of health's inspection staff to tour the premises before you are ready to open. As a newcomer to the business, you may have missed an essential task or piece of equipment that could halt or delay the grand opening of your butcher shop, so take this extra step as a precaution.
7. Oversee the delivery of your meat products, set up a dating system to keep tabs on when each delivery of meat arrives at your shop and begin preparing cuts of meat to stock your display cases. Have adequate sizes of bags, wraps and other supplies on hand to package meat for customers.
8. Purchase a back-up generator for peace of mind. Power outages are a fact of life and are, at the very least, inconvenient when you're worried about keeping lights on. If your pricey inventory of raw meat depends upon refrigeration 24/7, you probably won't want to take a chance on leaving this piece of equipment off your supply list.
9. Experiment with sales, incentives and marketing programs once you've opened your doors. Decades ago, when meat markets were the norm and supermarkets didn't exist, butchers knew customers' likes and dislikes as well as they knew their own. It wasn't unusual for a butcher to call a customer to inform him that a choice cut just arrived from the supplier and was earmarked just for him. This is exactly the kind of service that separates prime cuts from hamburger.
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