Fun With Fire & Knives: Paige & John Courtney of Chop Shop Park City, Part 2

This is the conversation for anyone who’s ever fantasized about crushing it by opening a food business—and considered going into business with a spouse in a high-stress, all-consuming career. We’re back with Chop Shop “power couple” Paige and John Courtney. With careers spent in big restaurants, they’re now in the resort town of Park City, Utah, preparing to open a nose-to-tail butcher shop. Besides dry-aged beef and the meat of lovingly raised animals, they’re planning to sell and deliver prepared foods and serve a limited menu. They’re also launching during a pandemic, and they’re in business with two other couples who’ve never been in food service. Not awe inspiring enough? John is also a Chopped Champion. His career working with fire and knives has been crowned with the $10,000 grand prize of Food Network throwdown shows. Paige jokes that her fame is in being John Courtney’s wife. But she has had her own stellar career as a front-of-house manager and a sommelier for some amazing restaurants.