Spotlight: Gourmet Meat & Sausage Shop
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The butcher, the baker, and the candlestick maker. In the stories and poems of childhood, every quaint village had them. Along with a village smithy working under a spreading chestnut tree, tradesmen formed the backbone of local commerce and were the dependable core of the community, providing sustenance and essential services. Here in Lakewood, we still have them – minus the chestnut tree – and yesterday I had the pleasure of getting acquainted with the Butcher: Brian Ray, the manager of our neighborhood butcher shop. Spotlight Interview by Bruce McDonald.
Bruce: I know, for starters, that Gourmet Meat & Sausage Shop is what I’d call a genuine local institution. The neighborhood butcher shop. Is that a family business you grew up with?
Brian: No, not at all. (laughs) I didn’t come from a family of butchers. I’ve done social work, and worked in restaurants. That was the connection, working in restaurants. When COVID hit, it was death for the restaurant business. I got laid off. I was at home, cooped up like almost everybody, out of work and bored. I came by here and saw the shop had canopies out and crowds of people were lining up, and the workers here were going as fast as they could. People couldn’t eat in restaurants, the grocery stores were a mess, and this little shop was running as fast as they could to fill the gap. They knew me and asked if I could help them out. I jumped right in, and got going right away. Jim, the owner, started teaching me from day one, from the ground up. There were four guys who had tons of experience in the shop for me to learn from, each with different strengths and specialties, and so willing to pass on their knowledge.
Even though the shop is kind of tucked in here between an office storefront and Garramone’s Restaurant, not facing the street, just about everybody knows you’re here. Yes, and I think that comes from having a good reputation for quality. Word gets around. We’re a high-end business, and we specialize in UDSA Prime beef. What you get in the grocery stores is Choice and Select – lower quality cuts. What we have costs more, but you’ll know when you eat it, where that money goes. It’s all hand cut in the shop, and that’s a craft where the difference in quality comes from experience. The store has been here since 1972, when the Southern Gables neighborhood wasn’t even fully built out. A few of our regulars have been coming here almost that long, and overall I’d say at least half of our customers are regulars that we know by name, what they like, things about their families. We do a good business in dogbones, for people whose dogs won’t have any other kind, and we get to know the dogs like any other family member. People come in with questions, how to grill or smoke different cuts of meat, and we can always help out. Sometimes we get the smoker going out front and do it for them. You know, community. That’s so important. Feels good too.
Well, that’s what we’re all about too, with the neighborhood Association. Lakewood is good for that. Did you grow up here? No, but I married a Lakewood girl. I grew up in Central Illinois, came out here in 2008. It’s such a great place to be. I love being close to the mountains and to Denver. Great place in lots of ways. Lakewood is definitely home.
What kinds of things do you like to do for leisure? I like hiking, live music, dogs… all those Colorado lifestyle things. And board games. My wife and I really love board games. For sports, I get some grief about being a Chicago fan – Bulls, Cubs, Bears. Here though, we put up the Broncos and Rockies flags, Nuggets, Avs. The shop is all Colorado.
Brian showed me around the shop and it was indeed impressive how much of the shelf space is devoted to locally made products. Lots of Colorado, true to form. Sauces, spices, rubs. House branded, pickled and preserved specialties. Deli meats and cheeses. Sausages! They have 35 distinct varieties of sausages, all made in-house. For the adventurous gourmet, there are exotic meats from game animals, alligator, snake, turtle. Bison. Kangaroo. Unique.
We talked about the importance of community, and of course I brought up the Neighbor Deal that the shop is offering to Southern Gables residents on the BIG YELLOW MAGNET. (The refrigerator magnet1 we gave out in April, with Neighbor Deals like this one.) I also learned about a community connection that I might have known about if I lived close enough to the shop to smell the smoke. On a lot of Saturdays starting at 11 they fire up the grill outside and sell hotdogs. Like everything in the shop, top quality.
Gourmet Meat & Sausage Shop is a Southern Gables Selected Business Supporter. The shop is located at 9168 W Jewell Ave, Lakewood.
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