Butchers’ Week
With their expertise and personal touch, for those who appreciate quality meat, there's nothing better than a good butcher.
Celebrate the craft and heritage of independent butchers while positioning premium, locally-sourced meat as a quality alternative to supermarket cuts.
- Behind-the-scenes: Meet your local butcher and their expertise
- Quality cuts matter: Why specialty butchers deliver superior meat selection
- Heritage meets modern: How traditional butchering skills drive customer loyalty
- Support local: Spotlight independent butchers in your community
Butchers have been around for the longest time and have been the oldest craft since 30 AD when the topic of butchering was mentioned in a parable in the Bible. Butchers have long since been cutting up meats, creating guilds, helping form safety guidelines for butchers, and eventually creating companies that help expand the butchering process to meet demand.
The meat-processing industry advanced further through technological developments such as better refrigeration and electricity, making the process easier to handle and allowing people to have more access to their favorite cuts than ever before.
However, once the developments of the supermarkets came around, the need for butchers became less of a necessity and more of a specialty and a niche.
While it’s faster to get your cuts from places such as Walmart, butchers can create meats that are distinctly their own. Butchers’ Week highlights the great work was done by these family-run businesses, including celebrating the long ling of history the craft has done for society and gives customers and meat-lovers the opportunity to support their local businesses.
The holiday is sponsored by William Reed, an event organizing business, and Meat Trades Magazine, a magazine centralized around the craft of butchering. Each year a new theme is chosen, and butchers all over the world get to create their own celebrations for what they do for their business and their customers.