ABOUT PORTER ROAD BUTCHER
Here at Porter Road Butcher, we are passionate about providing Nashvillians with the best product available. Our meat is both healthier and better tasting because of the natural lives that our animals lived, and even the appearance of the meat tells the story of a happy life: beautiful marbling, bright vivid color, and firm, shapely cuts.
During their lives on the farms, our cows eat grass like they were intended to do, our chickens live on a green pasture blanketed by plenty of sunshine and outfitted with protection from predators, and our pigs root and forage and play around in the mud just like they do over at Old MacDonald’s Farm. Never would our animals ever come from someplace like a concrete lot. No way!
We know that happy animals are the best animals, and we therefore make sure all of our animals have had the best lives possible—with just one bad day at the end of it.
By forming relationships with our farmers, we create both bonds of trust and levels of friendship, therefore holding one another accountable for the best possible product that we can then deliver to you, our friends and customers.
Keeping in line with Porter Road Butcher’s mission to provide the freshest and most natural meats available, we make our sausages, pâtés, bone stocks, prepared foods, breakfast, lunch, and even dog food completely from scratch, always using the freshest ingredients available. Because, why would we use anything less?
First and foremost, quality is the driving force behind everything that Porter Road Butcher does. As a business that is owned and operated by two culinarians, Chris Carter and James Peisker, and staffed by a bunch of food-loving employees, passion and creativity are mixed into everything we do, continually increasing the quality of our work.
As a rule, we source our animals from no farther than three hours outside of our shops, and we aim to use local produce when available. Our dairy comes from a local dairy farmer, our eggs from a local egg farmer, our cheese from a small local farm with pasture-raised animals, and our market products are sourced exclusively from the region. We will stamp our name on nothing less than excellence.
HOW IT ALL BEGAN
It was a Thursday night at one favorite Nashville restaurant, and it was the first time that Chris Carter and James Peisker met. Chris was manning the meat station and James was in charge of fish, and a conversation naturally developed as the tickets started firing and the kitchen began to heat up. Before their first night of work together was over, they had formed a funny and friendly camaraderie.
As time wore on and the two spent more time together in the kitchen, James and Chris began to realize quite a few similarities between the two of them: similar work style, similar quirky senses of humor, and similar disdain for their current jobs. One sunny afternoon, Chris was driving to work and spotted a restaurant space for sale. An idea struck him and he proposed starting a business with James. Eager for a change and hungry for more creative freedom, James hopped on board, and from that moment forward, the two were business partners.
While dreaming of their own restaurant space, Chris and James noticed an emerging trend in the culinary world and soon chose to bring said trend to Nashville: artisanal butcher shops. “Lindy and Grundy was about to cut the ribbon for their shop in Los Angeles, the Butcher & Larder had just opened their doors in Chicago, and we figured we could open up a butcher shop for a sixth of the price of what we were initially looking at, and then put that money toward our restaurant space once we had enough saved,” said James.
IT MADE PERFECT SENSE.
The guys searched Nashville up and down for the right spot to plant their inaugural shop, but getting all of their ducks in a row required a lot of work—much more than they anticipated.
While they looked for brick-and-mortar, the soon-to-be Butcher Boys got the business going: farmers dropped off hogs to their commercial rent-a-kitchen downtown where they had enough space to entirely break down the animal; then they set up a booth at the Farmer’s Market to sell fresh meat and sausage on the weekends.
“It was ridiculous,” said Chris. “We would be breaking down an entire pig while the women in the kitchen space next to us were preparing lasagna and brownies and stuff.”
Initially the two envisioned their shop settled in a small space located at the intersection of Porter Road and Greenwood Avenue in East Nashville, hence the name “Porter Road Butcher.” But even though Chris lived just down the street and it was there that the boys set up their first [very primitive] office (complete with financial projections and amateur blueprints stapled to the walls) the space at Porter Road didn’t work out. Disappointed, they kept looking.
While Chris worked the morning shift at neighborhood favorite spot Mitchell’s Deli, James worked at neighboring Watanabe Japanese restaurant during dinner, affording them one person to be working at the butcher shop around the clock. Whether that meant trimming hedges and mowing lawns to earn extra dough, meeting with investors to squeeze out another drop of money, flexing their culinary muscles by booking catering events, or doing other manly-man work, there was no rest for the weary when it came to bringing their idea to fruition.
It was James who drove past Tom’s Elite Barbecue, located on a bustling Gallatin Avenue in East Nashville, at the very moment they officially closed their doors and put a “for rent” sign in their window. The location, he decided, was perfect and before they knew it, Chris and James were shaking hands and signing on the dotted line.
Despite the Gallatin Road location, they kept the name, “Porter Road Butcher” and ran with it. There’s a certain ring to it, don’t you think? Fortunately, business at the shop has taken off, despite the somewhat confusing name, and has only become stronger, bigger, and better since their doors opened in November of 2011.
In preparation for opening up their first butcher shop, Chris and James drove all over middle Tennessee to meet with famers, tour their operations, and learn about their farming practices to find the right sources for meat that they’d be proud and excited to sell.
What they ended up with was this: beef from Bethpage, Tennessee; chicken from Ashland City, Tennessee; hogs and eggs from Summertown, Tennessee; lamb from Chattanooga; and cheese from all over the state and region.
Their operation has expanded since those early days, and they now own two butcher shops (the original in East Nashville and the newer shop in West Nashville) as well as a slaughterhouse and processing facility just an hour and a half north in Princeton, Kentucky. In an effort to continue improving the presence of their business and the quality of their products, gaining a larger audience in Nashville and acquiring the ability to control the meat from the beginning to the end were paramount in changing the face of the Nashville food industry.
And although they are growing, to this day they stand by their foundational values and the roots upon which they were grown: all local, all free-range, all truly natural, and all delicious.
