Brooklyn Meat Club Aims To Be An Online CSA for Steaks
Brooklynite Jorge Viscarra, the president of GV Foods, has worked in the food service industry for 15 years, supplying fresh cuts of meat to local restaurants and hotels. But he wanted to figure out a way to bring those fine quality steaks and chops closer to home. “He came to me and asked if I could figure out a way to create a butcher shop without the shop,” said his business partner, Shannon Clare. Stir in the wonders of e-commerce and the Brooklyn Meat Club was born, a kind of meat-devoted CSA based in Greenpoint.
The idea is to bring restaurant-grade, humanely raised meat to the home cook with minimal fuss. Customers place orders on Wednesday through the Meat Club’s website and pick it up on Saturday at Greenpoint bar Brooklyn Safehous. They don’t ship, because shipping meat is hard and often had terrible results. But they do offer steaks available by grade and thickness, as well as lamb, poultry, pork, and even ground buffalo meat. They do requests and bulk orders, if that’s how you roll.
“The idea is to provide the old school neighborhood butcher shop quality, service and prices that New Yorkers used to enjoy,” Clare said. “Brooklyn needs Brooklyn Meat Club for the same reason it has always needed a good butcher shop in the neighborhood, we like meat, we like to do things for ourselves, we like quality and we like things to be reasonable.” Plus, it’s a good way to avoid Whole Foods in December which, you know, seems like that would be worth it alone.