AÂ butcher shop set to open this month in Dobbs Ferry will offer house-made charcuterie and custom cuts of meat from Hudson Valley farms.
Matt Campbell is eyeing a mid-June opening for Campbell Meats. The butcher shop will offer whole animal cuts from four farms within a 90-mile radius of his storefront at 3 Cedar St., a popular area for restaurants in the riverfront village.
Campbell moved to Westchester from New York City a year and a half ago and said he soon found there weren”™t any butcher shops that sourced locally and used the whole animal. “Which is a shame, because that”™s probably some of the best beef in the country,” he said.
Campbell will offer whole animal cuts of beef, pork, lamb and poultry. He said whole animal methods allow him to offer cuts that “utilize the animal beyond the basic T-bone.” This can help not only provide different options for cooking but cut down on the amount of meat that is wasted.
Campbell learned his craft as a butcher at two popular New York City shops: Marlow & Daughters in Brooklyn and Harlem Shambles in Harlem. He has also worked as a chef at The Marrow in Manhattan and recently produced charcuterie for Chevalier in Manhattan, where he made connections with Hudson Valley farms.
He said meat still trails produce when it comes to farm-to-table purchasing.
“You might purchase fantastic seasonal produce from a few miles away, but still get beef from Montana,” he said. “So I think it”™s a natural progression: if you are going to source locally, why not also your beef?”
Meat will come to Campbell Meats from three farms in the Hudson Valley: Kinderhook Farm in Ghent in Columbia County; Meili Farm in Amenia in Dutchess County and John Fazio Farms in Modena in Ulster County. Campbell also plans to sell some cheese from Sprout Creek Farm in Poughkeepsie.
The meat is targeted toward what Campbell describes as “conscious carnivores,” meat eaters who are concerned with the treatment of the animals at commercial meat operations. He said the farms he works with are family-operated and small in scale.
“They have good lives,” Campbell said of the animals. “One of the farmers joked that they only have one bad day, and that”™s the last one.”
He said he also wants to be transparent with customers, and believes many people have lost the connection to the food they eat.
“I want them to not only see what I am physically doing with the product, but the farm where it came from as well,” Campbell said. He plans to offer handouts with information on each farm, designed like a baseball card.
From each farm, animals will be taken to a U.S.Department of Agriculture-certified slaughterhouse in Rensselaer County before shipment to Dobbs Ferry. Campbell expects just one or two deliveries a week.
“Everything that comes in will be gone by next delivery,” he said. “So if I get a delivery on Monday, by next Sunday I should have processed and sold all that meat.”
While there will be some pre-cut meats and cold cuts available, Campbell said the specifications of most cuts will be left to the customer”™s preferences.
“I”™m too young to even remember it, but when I talked to my parents, they remember walking to the butcher shop and saying I want however many pounds of meat, and I want it this way,” Campbell said. “And it might take them longer, but you got exactly what you wanted.”
He admits that style of meat shopping is “a generation behind us,” but believes more people are coming around to the idea of trying new cuts of meats. “They can come in here and have a cut of steak that they had never even heard of.”
Campbell”™s specialty is charcuterie. His terrines and pâtés, capicola and other cured and aged meats will help dsitinguish him from competitors as the locally sourced meat industry grows, he said.
“If in five years there are five more butchers getting meat from the same place I am, I hope this is what sets me apart,” he said.
Campbell is eyeing June 15 for his opening day. He still needs to complete some tiling and install the walk-in cooler, he said. His shop also need to be inspected and licensed by the state Department of Agriculture and Markets as soon as the location is ready for business.
While most of his sales will be direct to customers, he said he will do a small amount of wholesale business as well. He is in talks with a few restaurants to provide charcuterie. First on the list is L”™inizo, a farm-to-table Italian restaurant in Ardsley owned by his wife”™s sister and her husband, Heather and Scott Fratangelo.  Â
There”™s another potential customer Campbell has in mind: his newborn son. He said his son is part of what inspired him to move to Westchester and start the business.
“When he is old enough to have a hot dog, I don”™t want him to have a nasty hot dog full of chemicals,” said the butcher. “I want him to have one that I made.”
