June 3, 2025 • 15 mins
Scott Carey ditched his successful marketing career to launch his own butcher business. We check in to see how the meat trade is treating him as he transforms from processing to offering direct-to-consumer products.
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Speaker 1 (00:03):
Welcome back to On the Job. On today's episode, we're
going back up to eastern Pennsylvania to check in with
Scott carry who, at the height of the pandemic, left
his cushy computer job to fulfill a passion for butchering.
So let's get to it and hear how Scott Carey's
gamble played out. When Scott Carey was first on On
(00:28):
the Job, I wasn't yet the host. My good friend
and rising radio legend Otis Gray was, And in their conversation,
Scott told the Otis that after years of working in
online marketing, who was feeling unfulfilled.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I knew pretty early on, Like I was like, man,
this is exactly what I didn't want to do. It
didn't feel like me personally, Like I feel really antsy
when I like sit down and I'm just sitting on
a computer.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And while Scott was making a nice living in that
line of work, he craved chain, but he couldn't quite
figure out what that chain should be.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I was kind of more like like a entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
A entrepreneur, Yeah, you ever hear that that phrase?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
That's the first time I've ever heard that.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, Like you want to be like a business owner.
But you really don't.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Have, like, you don't know what it takes to do that. Yeah,
you don't know what it takes.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So Scott tried his hand at a bunch of different
side hustles, all of which didn't pan out, but at
least he had barbecuing, because at that time, Scott was
really into cooking barbecue. He loved the entire process of it,
the different cuts of meat, the dry rubs, getting the
smoke just right, and how all that coalesced into flavors
(01:40):
and textures that were borderline transcendent. But as deep as
Scott's passion for barbecue ran, he realized that his knowledge
about the actual meats he was smoking was severely lacking.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I cooked a brisket and I had no idea where
the on the cow where it came from. I got
cooked the pork button. I thought it came from the
pork's butt, and the actually he is the pork shoulder.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So Scott reached out to a couple of butchers in
the area to see if they'd show him the ropes,
and one of them, a guy named Mike, took a
chance on him and brought him under his wing, teaching
Scott about the cuts of meat and the craft of
butchery itself, and that's when things clicked for Scott. This
(02:22):
is what he was meant to be doing. So in
twenty twenty, Scott Carey and his mentor Mike became business
partners when they opened Slate Belt Butchery, a wholesale meat
processing facility in Salorsburg, Pennsylvania. And at first business was
well steady.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
We had one customer, and then like the next month,
we got two customers.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
In time, though, Scott signed on some bigger accounts and
words started to spread about this young new butcher and
his passion for the craft.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It was during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
A lot of processing plants were shut down, a lot
of people were, you know, trying to get processing and
find a processor, and so we were just getting inundated
with calls like, hey, can you help me?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Can you help me? And we were taking people on
as much as we could.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Business grew so fast in that first year that Scott
and Mike had to hire five employees and soon they
were bumping up against the confines of the space they
were renting.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
We were there a year and it was just very
clear that if we were going to grow this business
and become something substantial or offer anything to the farm community,
like we were going to have to have like our
own space.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So Scott starts looking around for larger, more suitable properties.
But as you can imagine, not everyone loves the idea
of a whole animal butchery sprouting up next door to them.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's very difficult to just like build brand new, you know,
with red tape and.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Dealing with townships and getting an.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Approval for a butcher shop. So the other idea was like, okay,
we could find a butcher shop that actually has what
we need. It might not be the most ideal set
up and stuff like that, but at least it's already
grandfathered in with the township.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Fortunately, the butcher community is pretty tight, so Scott had
a good lay of the land and before long he
heard about a butcher over a new Tripoli Pa who
was looking to retire.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Him and his wife. They had a butcher shop for
many years.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
It was in their family and no one in the
family wanted to take it on, and he put the
business up for sale. And when we saw it was like, man,
this is like perfect, has the rail system and has
the coolers.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
It was a previous butcher shop.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
And the added bonus of this shop was that it
had a retail store front, whereas Scott's first shop only
did wholesale.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Our customers were farmers.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
We were processing for them and they would take it
back and they would sell it at their farm market
or on their store or on their website.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So this new space offered Scott the ability to expand
his business to retail, which would not only offer a
whole new revenue stream, but really peaked his creative side.
Now instead of just breaking down animals behind the scenes
as he'd been doing for the last year, Scott could
now start doing what he calls the more glamorous aspects
(05:16):
of butchery, coming up with new products, making visually appealing displays,
interacting with customers who shared his same passion for food.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, that was like a no brainer for us.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Like and then we look for financing and we talked
to some lenders and they liked our business plan, they
liked what we were able to do in such a
short period of time, and so we were able to
buy that property.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
But while the facility Scott purchased was an existing butcher shop,
it still needed months worth of serious renovations to make
it fit their needs. And of course people can't hold
their hunger for a few months, nor could Scott's clients
stockpile their animals until he had the new place up
and running.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
In my mind, I wanted to continue business as usual
at the old location. I didn't want to have any interruptions.
I thought that that would have been very jarring for
a lot of our customers, a lot of our employees.
So the idea was to continue operations at the original
location in Saylorsburg, and then we were traveling to Neutropoli
in the evening, and we were doing the remodel ourselves.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
The only problem was that new Tripoli, where the new
shop would be, was a forty five minute drive from
their current location, which, while not super far away, was
just far enough to pose some problems. When we come
back from the break, Scott carry moves the butcher shop
down the road and hits a few speed bumps along
(06:41):
the way.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Looking for a job as lonely endless searching phone calls
that go nowhere, applications that vanish into thin air. What
if you could link with dozens of local companies who
are hiring right now with just one Connection. That's Express
Employment Professionals. Find us at expresspros dot com. One connection,
(07:04):
endless opportunities and no fees ever for job seekers Express
Employment Professionals expresspros dot com.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
We're back with Scott Carey, who, after a successful first
year as a wholesale butcher in Salorsburg, Pennsylvania, took the
leap of purchasing another facility in the town of New Tripoli.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So that was very challenging just because it was very
physically taxing to be working all day processing and then
you know, working all night like doing construction and taking
walls down and fixing things.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, those double days and forty five minute commutes were taxing,
and Scott will be the first to say they were.
He'll also confess that he loved them.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And sometimes, like when you're butchering, like when you're just
on the block all day long for eight hours a day,
just cutting beef for cutting pork like cold, it's mononyous.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
It's like the same old stuff, day in day out.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Scott Carey has never been one for the mundane. In fact,
it was that aversion to doing the same thing over
and over again that got him out of his previous
career in marketing. But what he came to learn over
the course of his time as a butcher is that
what the job keeps you on your feet and moving around.
Like most jobs, a lot of it is just doing
(08:27):
the same tasks over and over again. During the renovations,
though every day provided new challenges. One minute he might
be choosing a new wall color and the next putting
up a coat of spackle.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It was nice to have that break in my day
where I wasn't just butchering all day long and then
that was it. It was like kind of like an exciting
thing for me because it was just a different part
of my brain than I was using.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yet as much as Scott enjoyed the excitement and variety
that comes with turning and existing building into the shop
of his dreams, he always kept in mind that despite
the fun he was having with renovations, at the end
of the day, he was a butcher and it was
butchering that paid the bills.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I think as an entrepreneur, it's very easy to get
like this shiny ball syndrome where like you see something
and it's just like, oh, that's like cool, Like I
could have basically dropped everything at the butcher shop and
just focused all my time just renovating this new location.
But like that would have been doing a disservice to
the business. Number one, the culture would suffer, the employees
(09:35):
would suffer.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
So ultimately I felt.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Like my responsibility was keeping my current business operating with
no hiccups.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
And even if Scott enjoyed bouncing back and forth between
the two shops, it's never wise to fight a war
on two fronts. So the sooner he could get the
new shop up and running, the better, and fortunately he
knew how to kick things in overdrive.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
There's no breaks in the butcher shops sometimes because we're
processing under inspection, which we can only process so many
hours during the day, so there's this sense of urgency.
We make a plan to break three beef down or
four beef down in a day, like we gotta get
that done by two thirty. So yeah, there was definitely
like a sense of urgency to get that shop open.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Then one day, after months of tireless work, Scott looked
around and realized that after all that hard work and hustling,
they were done.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It was surprising to me because it wasn't like I
was looking at like an Excel sheet and I was like, okay,
I you know, five more things, four more things, three
more things. It was just like one day, just like
I had this realization was like, oh man, we did
what we set out to do. I just remember like
looking up and seeing like everything that we kind of accomplished,
and it was just like, man, we're opening in like
two weeks. Like everything's pretty much taken care of.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And with the new shop ready to go, Scott did
his best to move everything that was working at the
old shop over to the new operation, including his employees,
but unfortunately the forty five minute commute took its toll.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
The one left within a month. The drive just became
too much for her. I understood that that was a
conversation we had. I knew she was leaving. And then
I had my one of my main butchers. He stayed
with us for about a year and a half. He
was doing that drive, and it just became pretty like
apparent after a year that that drive was getting to him,
(11:27):
you know, working the whole day like butchering.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
It just physically, I think wore him down.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Despite the loss of two very good employees, Scott says,
moving his whole operation to the new facility went surprisingly smooth.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Our customers didn't notice much.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The culture we created, the processes we created, it was
all the same.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It was just a different room.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
If Scott has any regrets about moving his business, it's
only that he didn't do it sooner the.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Things that in my mind that were going to be
a big issue. I thought like the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Was gonna collapse on us because we were moving to
different location. And once we actually did it, and when
we pulled the bandit off, I was like, actually, that
wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It's been two years since Scott closed down the Salorsburg
facility and focused on the new Tripoli store, and already
he's seeing that gamble pay.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Off, seeing the numbers come in. I'm seeing the employees
that are staying. I'm seeing the employees were hiring, and
I'm creating jobs and like owning a bit small business
in a small community, like I'm super proud of that.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Not only does his business still serve the farmers in
the community, Scott is getting to exercise his creativity with
the new retail side of the business.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
You can't just like make the same twenty products all
the time, you got to expand and do new things
to get your customers to keep coming back. Every once
in a while, we'll like come up with a new product,
or we'll be working on a new product or a
new recipe or something like that, and like I get
really excited doing that.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Still, Scott admits that there are tasks and even days
of being a butcher that aren't as exciting.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Say about twenty percent of the jobs in a butcher
shop instagrammable, looking clean behind a counter selling meat that
has like the green and the kale.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And it looks beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
But there's a whole world, the whole agricultural world, that
just focuses on getting animals ready to be put in
a case like that.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
The other eighty percent of the job, Scott says, the
stuff the customers typically don't see is far from glamorous.
It's taking out the trash and sharpening knives. It's sanitizing surfaces,
fulfilling work orders and dealing with equipment repairs. But five
years in, Scott knows that's just what it means to
(13:47):
be a butcher, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It's it's it's wild because like I took a pay
cut to do this. I think the first like three
months I never even paid myself. I just lived off
savings and then like I'm still like not where I
used to be, but like that's okay.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oftentimes we think of work as a means to acquiring money,
something we do to pay the bills and support the
life we want to live, and there's nothing wrong with that. Frankly,
that's probably the majority of the workforce. But sometimes the
lucky ones among us find work that offers them more
than an income.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I never like felt like super excited to talk about
like what I did in the past. Yeah, I worked
for some good companies like Crayola and like Rhadale and
stuff like that. But like it became like very apparent
immediately after I graduated college and I got a job
and I was in a cubicle that I was just like, yeah,
this is not what I think I'm going to do
for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So while it might have taken Scott carry a few
tries and years of sitting in a cubicle before finding
his life's calling, what matters is he.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Got there, and I'm we're proud that I'm like carrying
on this trade and this craft because there's not many
of us left, and the ones that are left, they're
getting up there in age. I don't know who they're
passing it on to. And I have like a tremendous
amount of pride in that because it's it's a tough
job and I'm glad to
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Do it for On the job, I'm Afrey Thompson.
Welcome back to On the Job. On today's episode, we're
going back up to eastern Pennsylvania to check in with
Scott carry who, at the height of the pandemic, left
his cushy computer job to fulfill a passion for butchering.
So let's get to it and hear how Scott Carey's
gamble played out. When Scott Carey was first on On
(00:28):
the Job, I wasn't yet the host. My good friend
and rising radio legend Otis Gray was, And in their conversation,
Scott told the Otis that after years of working in
online marketing, who was feeling unfulfilled.
Speaker 2 (00:44):
I knew pretty early on, Like I was like, man,
this is exactly what I didn't want to do. It
didn't feel like me personally, Like I feel really antsy
when I like sit down and I'm just sitting on
a computer.
Speaker 1 (00:55):
And while Scott was making a nice living in that
line of work, he craved chain, but he couldn't quite
figure out what that chain should be.
Speaker 3 (01:04):
I was kind of more like like a entrepreneur.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
A entrepreneur, Yeah, you ever hear that that phrase?
Speaker 1 (01:09):
That's the first time I've ever heard that.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
Yeah, Like you want to be like a business owner.
But you really don't.
Speaker 3 (01:14):
Have, like, you don't know what it takes to do that. Yeah,
you don't know what it takes.
Speaker 1 (01:18):
So Scott tried his hand at a bunch of different
side hustles, all of which didn't pan out, but at
least he had barbecuing, because at that time, Scott was
really into cooking barbecue. He loved the entire process of it,
the different cuts of meat, the dry rubs, getting the
smoke just right, and how all that coalesced into flavors
(01:40):
and textures that were borderline transcendent. But as deep as
Scott's passion for barbecue ran, he realized that his knowledge
about the actual meats he was smoking was severely lacking.
Speaker 2 (01:53):
I cooked a brisket and I had no idea where
the on the cow where it came from. I got
cooked the pork button. I thought it came from the
pork's butt, and the actually he is the pork shoulder.
Speaker 1 (02:01):
So Scott reached out to a couple of butchers in
the area to see if they'd show him the ropes,
and one of them, a guy named Mike, took a
chance on him and brought him under his wing, teaching
Scott about the cuts of meat and the craft of
butchery itself, and that's when things clicked for Scott. This
(02:22):
is what he was meant to be doing. So in
twenty twenty, Scott Carey and his mentor Mike became business
partners when they opened Slate Belt Butchery, a wholesale meat
processing facility in Salorsburg, Pennsylvania. And at first business was
well steady.
Speaker 2 (02:41):
We had one customer, and then like the next month,
we got two customers.
Speaker 1 (02:46):
In time, though, Scott signed on some bigger accounts and
words started to spread about this young new butcher and
his passion for the craft.
Speaker 3 (02:56):
It was during the pandemic.
Speaker 2 (02:57):
A lot of processing plants were shut down, a lot
of people were, you know, trying to get processing and
find a processor, and so we were just getting inundated
with calls like, hey, can you help me?
Speaker 3 (03:10):
Can you help me? And we were taking people on
as much as we could.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Business grew so fast in that first year that Scott
and Mike had to hire five employees and soon they
were bumping up against the confines of the space they
were renting.
Speaker 2 (03:24):
We were there a year and it was just very
clear that if we were going to grow this business
and become something substantial or offer anything to the farm community,
like we were going to have to have like our
own space.
Speaker 1 (03:37):
So Scott starts looking around for larger, more suitable properties.
But as you can imagine, not everyone loves the idea
of a whole animal butchery sprouting up next door to them.
Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's very difficult to just like build brand new, you know,
with red tape and.
Speaker 3 (03:54):
Dealing with townships and getting an.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Approval for a butcher shop. So the other idea was like, okay,
we could find a butcher shop that actually has what
we need. It might not be the most ideal set
up and stuff like that, but at least it's already
grandfathered in with the township.
Speaker 1 (04:10):
Fortunately, the butcher community is pretty tight, so Scott had
a good lay of the land and before long he
heard about a butcher over a new Tripoli Pa who
was looking to retire.
Speaker 3 (04:22):
Him and his wife. They had a butcher shop for
many years.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
It was in their family and no one in the
family wanted to take it on, and he put the
business up for sale. And when we saw it was like, man,
this is like perfect, has the rail system and has
the coolers.
Speaker 3 (04:36):
It was a previous butcher shop.
Speaker 1 (04:38):
And the added bonus of this shop was that it
had a retail store front, whereas Scott's first shop only
did wholesale.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
Our customers were farmers.
Speaker 2 (04:49):
We were processing for them and they would take it
back and they would sell it at their farm market
or on their store or on their website.
Speaker 1 (04:56):
So this new space offered Scott the ability to expand
his business to retail, which would not only offer a
whole new revenue stream, but really peaked his creative side.
Now instead of just breaking down animals behind the scenes
as he'd been doing for the last year, Scott could
now start doing what he calls the more glamorous aspects
(05:16):
of butchery, coming up with new products, making visually appealing displays,
interacting with customers who shared his same passion for food.
Speaker 3 (05:26):
Yeah, that was like a no brainer for us.
Speaker 2 (05:28):
Like and then we look for financing and we talked
to some lenders and they liked our business plan, they
liked what we were able to do in such a
short period of time, and so we were able to
buy that property.
Speaker 1 (05:40):
But while the facility Scott purchased was an existing butcher shop,
it still needed months worth of serious renovations to make
it fit their needs. And of course people can't hold
their hunger for a few months, nor could Scott's clients
stockpile their animals until he had the new place up
and running.
Speaker 2 (05:58):
In my mind, I wanted to continue business as usual
at the old location. I didn't want to have any interruptions.
I thought that that would have been very jarring for
a lot of our customers, a lot of our employees.
So the idea was to continue operations at the original
location in Saylorsburg, and then we were traveling to Neutropoli
in the evening, and we were doing the remodel ourselves.
Speaker 1 (06:20):
The only problem was that new Tripoli, where the new
shop would be, was a forty five minute drive from
their current location, which, while not super far away, was
just far enough to pose some problems. When we come
back from the break, Scott carry moves the butcher shop
down the road and hits a few speed bumps along
(06:41):
the way.
Speaker 4 (06:44):
Looking for a job as lonely endless searching phone calls
that go nowhere, applications that vanish into thin air. What
if you could link with dozens of local companies who
are hiring right now with just one Connection. That's Express
Employment Professionals. Find us at expresspros dot com. One connection,
(07:04):
endless opportunities and no fees ever for job seekers Express
Employment Professionals expresspros dot com.
Speaker 1 (07:15):
We're back with Scott Carey, who, after a successful first
year as a wholesale butcher in Salorsburg, Pennsylvania, took the
leap of purchasing another facility in the town of New Tripoli.
Speaker 2 (07:27):
So that was very challenging just because it was very
physically taxing to be working all day processing and then
you know, working all night like doing construction and taking
walls down and fixing things.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
You know.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
Well, those double days and forty five minute commutes were taxing,
and Scott will be the first to say they were.
He'll also confess that he loved them.
Speaker 2 (07:51):
And sometimes, like when you're butchering, like when you're just
on the block all day long for eight hours a day,
just cutting beef for cutting pork like cold, it's mononyous.
Speaker 3 (08:02):
It's like the same old stuff, day in day out.
Speaker 1 (08:05):
Scott Carey has never been one for the mundane. In fact,
it was that aversion to doing the same thing over
and over again that got him out of his previous
career in marketing. But what he came to learn over
the course of his time as a butcher is that
what the job keeps you on your feet and moving around.
Like most jobs, a lot of it is just doing
(08:27):
the same tasks over and over again. During the renovations,
though every day provided new challenges. One minute he might
be choosing a new wall color and the next putting
up a coat of spackle.
Speaker 2 (08:41):
It was nice to have that break in my day
where I wasn't just butchering all day long and then
that was it. It was like kind of like an exciting
thing for me because it was just a different part
of my brain than I was using.
Speaker 1 (08:55):
Yet as much as Scott enjoyed the excitement and variety
that comes with turning and existing building into the shop
of his dreams, he always kept in mind that despite
the fun he was having with renovations, at the end
of the day, he was a butcher and it was
butchering that paid the bills.
Speaker 2 (09:13):
I think as an entrepreneur, it's very easy to get
like this shiny ball syndrome where like you see something
and it's just like, oh, that's like cool, Like I
could have basically dropped everything at the butcher shop and
just focused all my time just renovating this new location.
But like that would have been doing a disservice to
the business. Number one, the culture would suffer, the employees
(09:35):
would suffer.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
So ultimately I felt.
Speaker 2 (09:37):
Like my responsibility was keeping my current business operating with
no hiccups.
Speaker 1 (09:43):
And even if Scott enjoyed bouncing back and forth between
the two shops, it's never wise to fight a war
on two fronts. So the sooner he could get the
new shop up and running, the better, and fortunately he
knew how to kick things in overdrive.
Speaker 2 (09:58):
There's no breaks in the butcher shops sometimes because we're
processing under inspection, which we can only process so many
hours during the day, so there's this sense of urgency.
We make a plan to break three beef down or
four beef down in a day, like we gotta get
that done by two thirty. So yeah, there was definitely
like a sense of urgency to get that shop open.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Then one day, after months of tireless work, Scott looked
around and realized that after all that hard work and hustling,
they were done.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
It was surprising to me because it wasn't like I
was looking at like an Excel sheet and I was like, okay,
I you know, five more things, four more things, three
more things. It was just like one day, just like
I had this realization was like, oh man, we did
what we set out to do. I just remember like
looking up and seeing like everything that we kind of accomplished,
and it was just like, man, we're opening in like
two weeks. Like everything's pretty much taken care of.
Speaker 1 (10:48):
And with the new shop ready to go, Scott did
his best to move everything that was working at the
old shop over to the new operation, including his employees,
but unfortunately the forty five minute commute took its toll.
Speaker 2 (11:02):
The one left within a month. The drive just became
too much for her. I understood that that was a
conversation we had. I knew she was leaving. And then
I had my one of my main butchers. He stayed
with us for about a year and a half. He
was doing that drive, and it just became pretty like
apparent after a year that that drive was getting to him,
(11:27):
you know, working the whole day like butchering.
Speaker 3 (11:29):
It just physically, I think wore him down.
Speaker 1 (11:32):
Despite the loss of two very good employees, Scott says,
moving his whole operation to the new facility went surprisingly smooth.
Speaker 3 (11:41):
Our customers didn't notice much.
Speaker 2 (11:43):
The culture we created, the processes we created, it was
all the same.
Speaker 3 (11:48):
It was just a different room.
Speaker 1 (11:50):
If Scott has any regrets about moving his business, it's
only that he didn't do it sooner the.
Speaker 3 (11:56):
Things that in my mind that were going to be
a big issue. I thought like the whole thing.
Speaker 2 (12:00):
Was gonna collapse on us because we were moving to
different location. And once we actually did it, and when
we pulled the bandit off, I was like, actually, that
wasn't that bad.
Speaker 1 (12:09):
It's been two years since Scott closed down the Salorsburg
facility and focused on the new Tripoli store, and already
he's seeing that gamble pay.
Speaker 2 (12:18):
Off, seeing the numbers come in. I'm seeing the employees
that are staying. I'm seeing the employees were hiring, and
I'm creating jobs and like owning a bit small business
in a small community, like I'm super proud of that.
Speaker 1 (12:32):
Not only does his business still serve the farmers in
the community, Scott is getting to exercise his creativity with
the new retail side of the business.
Speaker 2 (12:42):
You can't just like make the same twenty products all
the time, you got to expand and do new things
to get your customers to keep coming back. Every once
in a while, we'll like come up with a new product,
or we'll be working on a new product or a
new recipe or something like that, and like I get
really excited doing that.
Speaker 1 (12:57):
Still, Scott admits that there are tasks and even days
of being a butcher that aren't as exciting.
Speaker 2 (13:04):
Say about twenty percent of the jobs in a butcher
shop instagrammable, looking clean behind a counter selling meat that
has like the green and the kale.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
And it looks beautiful.
Speaker 2 (13:14):
But there's a whole world, the whole agricultural world, that
just focuses on getting animals ready to be put in
a case like that.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
The other eighty percent of the job, Scott says, the
stuff the customers typically don't see is far from glamorous.
It's taking out the trash and sharpening knives. It's sanitizing surfaces,
fulfilling work orders and dealing with equipment repairs. But five
years in, Scott knows that's just what it means to
(13:47):
be a butcher, and he wouldn't have it any other way.
Speaker 2 (13:50):
It's it's it's wild because like I took a pay
cut to do this. I think the first like three
months I never even paid myself. I just lived off
savings and then like I'm still like not where I
used to be, but like that's okay.
Speaker 1 (14:06):
Oftentimes we think of work as a means to acquiring money,
something we do to pay the bills and support the
life we want to live, and there's nothing wrong with that. Frankly,
that's probably the majority of the workforce. But sometimes the
lucky ones among us find work that offers them more
than an income.
Speaker 2 (14:27):
I never like felt like super excited to talk about
like what I did in the past. Yeah, I worked
for some good companies like Crayola and like Rhadale and
stuff like that. But like it became like very apparent
immediately after I graduated college and I got a job
and I was in a cubicle that I was just like, yeah,
this is not what I think I'm going to do
for the rest of my life.
Speaker 1 (14:48):
So while it might have taken Scott carry a few
tries and years of sitting in a cubicle before finding
his life's calling, what matters is he.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Got there, and I'm we're proud that I'm like carrying
on this trade and this craft because there's not many
of us left, and the ones that are left, they're
getting up there in age. I don't know who they're
passing it on to. And I have like a tremendous
amount of pride in that because it's it's a tough
job and I'm glad to
Speaker 1 (15:15):
Do it for On the job, I'm Afrey Thompson.
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