The logistics that put a turkey on your table
Published 12:00 am, Sunday, November 20, 2016
A distraught couple rapped on the door of Fleishers Craft Butchery in Cos Cob the night before Thanksgiving last year, recalled store manager Greg Bardwell.
They didn’t yet have a turkey and asked if he had any leftovers. By chance, he had a few extra birds and was able to brighten their holiday. Bardwell was glad he could help the stricken pair, but he cautions others against waiting until the last minute. A wealth of logistics are involved with making sure Fleishers’ customers get their birds fresh from a local Northeastern farm, and it limits their number of spare ones.
Turkey logistics
The tricky numbers game — based on some guessing, Fleishers CEO Ryan Fibiger admitted — started a year ago for this Thanksgiving. Fibiger touched base with his farmers after the holidays to confirm whether he planned to purchase turkeys from them this year.
Six months ago, farmers called Fibiger to confirm the number of birds he needed. This is where Fibiger resorts to some guessing.
He can look back at how many turkeys he sold last year at some Fleishers locations, but those numbers are only a starting point, as Fleishers has opened a new butchery since last year.
He settled on ordering 2,200 birds for this year and will allocate them to Fleishers’ five shops, which include locations in Greenwich and Westport. He partnered with four turkey farms, with a large portion coming from Ekonk Hill Turkey Farm in Moosup, in Connecticut’s quiet corner.
High standards
Fibiger, a former banker turned butcher, is serious about the quality of proteins sold at his shops. He and his butchers commonly visit farms before they agree to work together. First he assures they abide by his basic mandates: no antibiotics, no growth hormones and only pasture-raised animals.
Fibiger emphasizes this point as central to his decision to pivot careers and open his first butchery. Fleishers has a lofty goal of being a big influence on the food industry. Before farm-to-table had become trendy, and restaurants touting the tagline multiplied, Fibiger set out to make people more aware of the origins of their food.
A primary mission for Fleishers is education. It runs one of few butchery apprenticeship programs from which many butchers who’ve opened up shop across the country graduated. Customers are often invited to classes, some free, to learn cutting and cooking techniques. And every year Fleishers’ staff members go on a tour to meet their farmers and animals.
The most recent company trip took place two weeks ago and Bardwell, Cos Cob’s manager, said he took selfies with the turkeys to show customers.
“I’ve seen enough commercial poultry farms to see the difference between them and those we partner with,” he said. “The smell, noise, sound and ambiance is so different.” He said he’s already shown many customers the photos so they understand the process.
A life of little stress for Ekonk turkeys
Last week Fibiger visited Ekonk again and walked around the 10-acre turkey pen. It was his third time there meeting with Rick Hermonot, who owns the farm with his wife, and their daughter Katherine Hermonot, who helps her parents run it. The last time was a year ago, when another farm shorted him several hundred birds days before Thanksgiving. He described frantically driving to places like Ekonk to see if they could help make up the gap.
“The last thing you want to do is ruin someone’s holiday by telling them you don’t have their turkey,” Fibiger said. He ended up finding enough to cover all orders, but Fibiger said he’s thankful no similar problem has arisen this year.
While Fibiger chatted with the Hermonots and ambled among the turkeys, which followed the group around the pen, the 460 birds he’d ordered were being processed on site. A family farm at the scale of Ekonk is rare, but slaughtering the turkeys in the same place they’re raised and sold is almost unheard of, Fibiger said.
Ten years ago, the Hermonots were raising around 50 turkeys annually and mostly as a hobby. This year they raised 3,500, making it the biggest pasture-raised turkey farm in the state. Their ability to process the birds in a building just a few feet from where the turkeys roam in their pen is significant.
“Turkeys don’t handle stress well,” Rick Hermonot said. “So they literally die of heart attacks when they’re in transit to (be) processed.”
Aside from losing fewer turkeys, the reduced stress on the birds right before their death is also a benefit to whoever ends up eating them. “Less stress right before death increases the quality of the meat,” Katherine Hermonot said.
From start to end, Ekonk turkeys live less stressful lives because they are never locked up in their barn and are always able to jaunt freely around their pen, she said. All this means Ekonk’s turkeys are fresher and thus cook faster, so she warns customers to be wary of overcooking their birds.
All the extra effort and cost associated with raising turkeys this way is worth it to the Hermonots because the “quality of life for them is important to us,” said Katherine, who talked while petting the feathers of a turkey standing beside her.
Making Fleishers’ products less costly
After leaving the farm, Fibiger, who has one of his busiest seasons ahead of him, said these visits are needed to “reset and remind me why we do this. It’s important to me that I can go see the turkeys and know how they’re being raised.”
Sometimes he’ll give out the numbers of these farmers to customers so they can talk to them and visit, too. Many of Fleishers’ products are more expensive than buying a turkey or beef from the grocery store, Fibiger said, but knowing where your food comes from and being able to talk to the person who makes it is important.
Nonetheless, Fibiger understands the cost of Fleishers meat doesn’t make it an option for everyone. Integral to his vision for the company is changing that.
“A lot of people see value in what we offer,” he said. “But we need to figure out how to make this accessible to as many as possible.”
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