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Butcher Shops Celebrate the Holiday with Long Hours
YOUNGSTOWN, Ohio -- As the sun rises, marking the start of the hustle and bustle along U.S. Route 224 that becomes even more frantic during the holidays, Danny Catullo has been at work three hours.
At this time of year, from mid-November through New Year’s Eve, he arrives at his shop, Catullo Prime Meats, around 5 a.m. to begin processing that day’s orders to be shipped across the country, double-checking every order to make sure that every piece of meat – whether it’s turkey, ham, prime rib or anything that he carries in his store -- is the right weight and the proper cut.
Four hours later, the doors open to customers. Some are regulars who stop in to make their weekly visit, but at this time of year, it’s more likely that they’re customers making their yearly visit. Many of the customers who line up throughout the day, Catullo notes, are people returning to the Mahoning Valley to visit family.
“It’s great because we get to see a lot of people that aren’t normally in town. We get older customers and sons and daughters of old customers. We get to be part of the whole family experience,” says Catullo, the third-generation owner of the store.
With so many customers, a few of whom have been coming to the store since his grandfather ran it, coming in only once a year, he feels the pressure to make sure that the holiday meals they’re helping to prepare are perfect.
“Especially those three days before Thanksgiving, it’s crazy,” he says. “It’s not like a regular day. This is for the holidays. This is for their family. If we don’t have the right recipe, the right directions, the right size, we’re impacting their whole holiday.”
Catullo’s preparation for the holidays starts in mid-August when he starts bringing on seasonal employees. Even with the Christmas season creeping up earlier and earlier each year, it might seem odd to start during late summer, but Catullo has his reasons.
“The one reason we add on help during the rest of the year and play it at a loss is to get to the holidays. We want to make sure those employees are trained. When you come in, you expect an employee to be able to tell you what’s going on,” he explains, adding that he usually hires 10 to 15 seasonal employees.
Store manager Ryan Fulton notes that there is no proper way to train a seasonal employee to be ready for the holiday rush.
“Our holiday season is insane. There’s so much, there’s no one thing [to prepare for]. It’s all the little things. There’s a lot of extra work during the holidays,” he says. “We all go over the orders and make sure the orders are correct. We obviously don’t want to make our customers upset when they go home and open up their holiday orders. We don’t want to ruin that meal.”
At Badurik’s Butcher Block in Mineral Ridge, owner Steve Badurik keeps his staff the same size throughout the holidays, but notes that the store is busier because of more orders during the holidays.
To keep it organized, he refers to a system he learned working at Catullo Prime Meats before starting his own business.
“I’ve got a board I use that Mr. Catullo used to call an ‘IBM’ – an Italian Business Machine,” he says with a chuckle. “All it is is a list of orders where I mark who buys what.”
On his IBM, he lists the type and weight of meat along the top of the sheet, with the customer’s name and delivery date listed below. In essence, it’s a giant spreadsheet taped to the wall next to the smoker.
“You have to make sure you’re not oversold on products and that you’re not left with too many. For Thanksgiving, it’s usually turkey. For Christmas, it’s kielbasa or ham or prime rib,” Badurik says. “It’s a great system for making sure you’re not oversold or undersold on anything.”
For Christmas, Badurik says, his best-seller is kielbasa, smoked right behind the counter and available in three varieties. During the holidays, the store can smoke between 100 and 200 pounds a day, with Badurik sometimes staying at the store until 1 or 2 in the morning to make sure everything is ready for the next day.
“We sold probably a couple thousand pounds of kielbasa [last year]. That’s part of what we have to prepare for. The whole month of December we get ready through smoking maybe a couple hundred pounds every day just to be ready to accommodate everything,” he says.
At Catullo Prime Meats, the top-seller for Thanksgiving is turkey, Fulton says, but combined items such as turducken and chiduckey – a turkey breast inside a duck inside a chicken – are becoming more popular. For Christmas, Catullo says the gift boxes his store offers have done well the past few years.
“These boxes are something that we don’t sell during the year and we try to make them special for the holiday season,” he says. “There are different packages that we put together to highlight what we carry.” Almost all other popular holiday items are carried year-round, he adds.
Catullo says the last six weeks of the year – roughly Thanksgiving through New Year’s Eve – account for 40% of his business. Every year, Fulton notes, more and more of that business comes from online orders.
“Our online store is increasing every year and our in-store business decreases a little bit every year but we still have a ton of customers come in through the door,” Fulton says, noting that as everything becomes more digital, the store still emphasizes meeting customers face-to-face.
“The difference between us and a larger retail store is that we try to make relationships with our customers and through that, take care of their individual needs. It’s not so much coming in and grabbing what you need. We give you recipes and advice and things like that to turn it into a special trip,” he says.
For many, choosing to go to a butcher is part of the holiday tradition, Badurik and Catullo say, and many do so because they want to serve the best possible meal to their families.
“They come to a butcher during the holidays because they want their meal to be perfect. They don’t want to go get a five-and-dime filet or a five-and-dime turkey and put that on the table,” Badurik says. “They want it to be special because people don’t see family on a daily basis any more. So when they get together, they want the meal to be perfect.”
With the stress that everyone experiences as the holidays approach, combined with the frenzy that ensues behind closed doors, Catullo does his best to keep chaos and customers from mixing.
“We pride ourselves on not letting the stress level of our high expectations of the holidays be known to the customer. When we come out, we want you to be comfortable,” he says. “You have many choices available when it comes to food and if you chose us, it’s a great way to reciprocate, by making sure it’s relaxed and you don’t feel pressured.”
Without the Christmas rush, Catullo points out that he couldn’t provide as much of the information he has to the customers who come in, whether frequently or annually.
“When I’m out there talking to customers, especially around Thanksgiving and Christmas, I’m learning what they’re doing. And then I’m expanding my knowledge that I can pass on,” he says. “That’s what great about the Youngstown area. There are so many nationalities and traditions and when you put them all together, we’re able to teach each other how to be better cooks.”
Having dealt with the holiday rush to butcher shops for most of their lives – Catullo started working at the family store when he was a teenager and Badurik started when he was 15 – both say they love dealing with the frenzy that arrives this time of year. They insist they look forward to it.
“It’s a rush. Since I was 15 working in a butcher shop, it’s been a rush. It’s a good feeling you get even though you’re working more and there’s a higher demand. It’s nice to serve so many people and give them good products,” Badurik says. “We want to hand you something that you can take home, eat it and come back to tell me how good it was. That’s my reward, my pay for the week.”
Pictured: Danny Catullo
Copyright 2014 The Business Journal, Youngstown, Ohio.
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