The Starbucks of Meat
One day, while consulting for one of the nation’s oldest organic farms, Bill the Butcher founder and CEO J’Amy Owens had an idea. During her 30-year career in retail, consulting with companies ranging from Starbucks to Saks Fifth Avenue, Owens had watched customers turn to neighborhood bakeries, farmers’ markets and local coffee shops. Owens thought the same locally focused model might work for another food most people eat regularly: meat.
In May 2009, she teamed up with William Von Schneidau, an experienced chef, and that August they launched the first Bill the Butcher shop in Woodinville. The venture has grown aggressively since then, with locations opening last year on the Eastside in Redmond and Bellevue, as well as in the Laurelhurst, Magnolia and Madison Valley neighborhoods of Seattle. Stores in Edmonds and Seattle’s Ballard neighborhood are under construction, and the company plans many more, all cut from the same pattern: Each shop has a single butcher who cuts meat to order; the meat comes from livestock that is raised locally in open pastures and, whenever possible, organically; no hormones are used and none of the food is genetically modified.
If anyone can convert the concept into success, Owens can. In 2000, an industry group named her one of the 25 most influential people in retail. A frequent public speaker, Owens has headlined conferences on retail strategies and appeared on the cover of Inc. magazine in 1999 beside the headline “Sales Guru to the Stars: What you can learn from the woman who helped Nike, Blockbuster and Starbucks energize their brands.”
Owens’ experience in retail suggested to her that people would pay a premium for sustainably raised meat at a local butcher shop. Last year, she took the unusual step of buying controlling interest in a public shell corporation and merging Bill the Butcher into it, creating what may well be one of the nation’s smallest publicly traded retail companies. Von Schneidau also departed the partnership in 2010, leaving Owens as the sole corporate officer.
Owens’ goal is to open 120 to 150 company-owned Bill the Butcher stores west of the Mississippi River.
“I think we’re going to be the Starbucks of meat,” she says. “I hope to have a national brand. I want to educate consumers about where their meat comes from, who raises it and why we have to keep small farmers and ranchers in business. We have a
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