The news first showed up earlier this week (to much gnashing of teeth) on the East Nashville Facebook group page — Porter Road Butcher is closing its brick-and-mortar butcher operation after 14-plus years at 501 Gallatin Ave. Later in the week, PRB founders Chris Carter and James Peisker made the announcement official on Facebook, and longtime Porter Road chronicler (and former Scene editor) Steve Cavendish reported more of the details at the Nashville Banner.
I still didn’t want to believe it, but an email from Carter and Peisker confirms that Saturday, June 14, is the final day the shop will be open. It’s important to emphasize that even though Porter Road is in the midst of a complicated bankruptcy filing and has had to close its retail shop, it remains in business. Its products are available at retail from local stores like Turnip Truck, Green Door Gourmet and others.
I spoke with Carter via phone, and he shared that the Nashville shop was actually hindering opportunities to grow a robust online business, since he had to remove the steaks from the larger inventory to stock the meat cases on Gallatin. The online business at porterroad.com is going strong, offering pasture-raised beef and pork cut by hand at the duo's Princeton, Ky., shop along with poultry and other kitchen staples.
Owners of the local online butcher shop say they intend to protect their employees, their farmers and their investors
As much as I loved shopping at the butcher shop, I value the convenience of ordering directly from Porter Road's processing plant — with one-to-two-day deliveries to Nashville. Orders over $125 ship for free to Music City.
So with all this going on, why did they have to close the shop?
It’s a Nashville story that should be a country song by now. “My Lease Came Due, So My Business Was Through!”
Carter and Peisker briefly owned the building where the butcher shop operated for almost 15 years, but they had to sell it as part of reorganizing their accumulated business debts, which they racked up during fairly aggressive expansion efforts. Losing control of their rent costs added more pressure for the small shop to turn a profit, which it wasn’t doing.
“The bankruptcy is not the overarching reason why the shop is closing,” Carter tells me. “It’s basically been a passion project for the past four or five years because it meant so much to us personally. The shop is the origin story of where it all began and represents 15 years of my 42 years of life!”
Rather than separating his salable inventory to send some to the retail location, Carter needed to have the steaks to sell online. He hopes PRB customers will take advantage of this alternate distribution option or shop for their meat at local stores that stock Porter Road products.
To encourage customers to try online ordering for home delivery, Porter Road is offering 20 percent off your first order with the code THANKYOUNASH, so that’s a great incentive. Carter is determined to get to the other side of this difficult period and is resolute in his commitment to connecting caring customers with ethically produced meat.
“The shop was a cost center instead of a profit center, and we were really down to one or two employees most of the time. It was a difficult decision, and I’m sorry we had to make it. The time is right.”
