Know Your Meat: The Butcher On A Quality Crusade
Nick Elder has a problem with your supermarket meat. "If you go to a big box store, you buy a tub of ground beef — there could be meat from a thousand different cows in there," he tells me. These facts are not surprising to him after 25 years in the business. But he believes there is a better way. As Luke's Local's meat maestro, Elder is fighting a quiet battle against the flavorless, plastic-wrapped mystery meat that's conquered American grocery stores. While corporate chains eliminate actual butchers from their business model, Nick and Luke have planted their flag: your dinner deserves better than anonymous meat from nowhere.
This wasn't always Elder's path. He studied percussion at Oberlin Conservatory, yet somewhere between classical training and professional orchestras, he fell for butchery. "I really thought Luke's Local was the kind of place where I had freedom to bring in the best programs instead of just working for a big corporation toeing the line," he says, with the conviction of someone who's escaped corporate purgatory. He now personally selects every ranch partnership, including the Brandt family operation in Southern California, whose beef emerged victorious after rigorous taste-testing because "the flavor is incredible."
What Elder is doing feels almost radical in its simplicity: offering meat with a backstory, cut by actual humans who know their craft. "We want the customer to have the engagement and service of a full service butcher," he explains, sounding equal parts businessman and true believer. In an age when we're supposedly craving human connection while simultaneously ordering everything through apps to avoid it, Elder's approach is refreshingly straightforward: Know who raised your meat, know who cut it, ask questions. Need something you don't see in the case? "That's why we're here," Elder says, with the quiet satisfaction of someone who found his calling in an unexpected place.
Leave a comment
Also in Luke's Local Blog
Four Blocks from Paradise
This August, Dead & Company are playing Golden Gate Park, four blocks from our Inner Sunset store on 9th Avenue.
The same music that shaped my understanding of joy, community, and what it means to be present will be echoing through the neighborhood where we've built our newest store. The same songs I learned on my brothers' bedroom floor, the same recordings I obsessed over as a teenager, the same tape that was playing when Charlie and I took our first ride in the Tacoma. Everything comes full circle in the place where we're trying to prove that grocery stores can still be neighborhood cornerstones.
Why My Truck Only Plays Tapes
The tape wall in our 9th Avenue store exists because we've been struggling to find the right balance of structure and freedom with our music selection. We never wanted one set playlist, but with four stores, having no guidelines turned what should be an enjoyable part of the job into a source of conflict. Who gets to choose? What happens when someone complains?
The answer came from an unexpected place: a recent purchase of a 2004 Tacoma with the original tape deck still working.
