Home butchers | Press

Eat less meat, but eat the best, fresh and, if possible, from local producers. Obviously, this is a wish that is easier to formulate than to achieve. But some distributors and producers want to make our life easier by offering a quality home delivery service for fresh meat.

Pierre-Marc Durivage
Press

“I have been cooking since I was very young and I do not buy frozen food, admits Catherine Moreau”, general manager of Viandes de la Ferme, distributor of Lavaltrie which has a good proportion of fresh products. “The texture can be different, it depends on how you thaw it. Not everyone allows themselves to defrost their chicken in the fridge for 24 hours or for 6 hours in cold water. There is certainly an education to be done in the method of thawing products. ”

Chef Marc-André Jetté, who launched his own home-based fresh meat distribution service this fall, goes further. “It is not true that there is no difference between fresh and frozen, he insists. Okay, it’s the same for ground beef, but a frozen steak won’t have the same water and blood retention, its juiciness won’t be the same, that’s for sure. Same thing for chicken, freezing causes the formation of water crystals which break the fibers, the ability to keep the juices inside will be reduced. ”

The chef and owner of the restaurant Hoogan et Beaufort, in the Rosemont district, in Montreal, certainly wanted to do useful work by offering his customers fresh meats delivered to their homes, but it is first of all by wanting to help his suppliers that he started his butcher’s shop, he says.

“The idea was born during the pandemic when two of my producers told me that they were going to cease production,” he explains. Among them, there was La Canardière, with whom I have worked for 15 years. The young people who had started by making the delivery took over their parents’ farm, they became friends. Me too, I come from the farm, my father was a miller, in Saint-Césaire, in Montérégie, I have always worked with farmers, my friends were farmers. It is therefore not surprising to learn that the name of his butcher’s shop, Édouard et Léo, refers to his grandfather and that of his partner, both farmers.

It was then by analyzing the market and consulting the approximately 3,000 customers registered in the Hoogan and Beaufort web mailing list that he saw that there was a place in the market for the delivery of fresh meat. He thus converted part of the premises of his catering service, he fitted out a cold room with an aging space and purchased a refrigerated truck to ensure the cold chain to customers’ homes.

It currently delivers 150 to 200 orders of boxes of fresh meats (and also some derived products, such as fresh pasta, sauces and marinated and pre-cooked meats) per week to the Island of Montreal, on the South Shore (from Boucherville in Brossard) and in the southern part of Laval.

“We already have a great clientele, very close to the restaurant, who already had confidence in our products,” says Marc-André Jetté. But we still have room for growth, we need it, we want to expand our radius and we will also soon deliver to drop-off points in downtown offices. Not to mention that he also intends to open another butcher’s shop which will be established elsewhere in Montreal.

A strong interest propelled by the pandemic

Catherine Moreau has also noticed an increasing interest from her customers for fresh meat delivered to their homes. “The clientele that we have developed are made up of epicureans who want to receive their meat on Friday and cook it at the weekend, they do not want to wait to thaw it”, explains the young woman, who started Meats from the farm in 2015 in response to demand from customers looking for products distributed in butcher shops and specialty grocery stores by Milibec, a family-owned business.

“Our sales exploded at the start of the pandemic, with a 75% increase in sales in the spring of 2020; everything that was institutional had to close for a while, people no longer went out, they turned to producers here. It has stabilized since then, but we are currently showing an increase of 45 to 50% compared to the beginning of 2020. And with the holidays coming, we are seeing a new increase in demand. ”

Lufa Farms, which also offer a limited supply of fresh meats produced by a few of their producers, have also seen growth in demand from customers, who now opt 60% for fresh meats, according to figures provided by the Montreal company.

As the Meats of the Farm and the Lufa Farms are distributors, they are limited by the offer of their suppliers. For example, it is almost impossible to find fresh beef delivered to your home in Quebec. A service offered by Édouard and Léo, who buys his cut animals directly from breeders, which not only allows him to maintain competitive prices, but also to showcase less well-known pieces of meat.

“I have always had this vision to use the whole beast and not just the noble parts”, explains Marc-André Jetté.

“The goal is to put the artisans first: the producer, who struggles to take care of his animals, after which we can count on Quentin Donot, our super butcher who takes care of fetching everything from the animals – he is really a craftsman, there are notions behind his work. And in the end, it is the artisan cooks, including those at home! ”

Ultimately, Marc-André Jetté also wants to offer video clips so that customers can know how to prepare the different cuts of meat they receive at home. “We often talk about cuts that butcher shops do not have, but that restaurants like to serve,” he says. Of course, I know very well that you can’t eat at a restaurant every day. So it’s kind of like giving people access to my own fridge. I want to share my fridge with Greater Montreal so that they can improve the quality of the meat they buy! », He concludes.

Consult the website of the Édouard et Léo butcher’s shop Consult the site of the Meats of the farm