Meat of the matter Fleisher’s bucks the agri-business trend BY LYNN WOODS

Meat of the matter
Fleisher’s bucks the agri-business trend
BY LYNN WOODS

Two years ago, Fleisher’s Grass-Fed & Organic Meats was struggling. It had opened in 2004 on a side street in uptown Kingston and business was slow. Owners Jessica and Joshua Applestone considered closing their doors, but then a new, central location on Wall Street became available. Just prior to Thanksgiving, they made the move. The new location made all the difference. “It rocked immediately,” Jessica said. “There was a 300 percent increase in business.”

It’s been booming ever since. Two weeks ago, a second Fleisher’s store opened in Rhinebeck. Designed by B. Early & Co., the roomy, longitudinal space has a high tin ceiling, brick walls, wooden floor and simple wooden countertop topping large glass display counters holding prime cuts of beef, lamb, pork, and veal, whole chickens, trays of chicken parts and homemade sausage. A selection of artisan cheeses and prepared foods, including chicken cutlets, roast beef and potato salad, are displayed in neighboring counters, while refrigerators along the back wall hold bottles of milk, cream and other local diary products. Jars of condiments line metal shelves.

Despite some last-minute glitches with electricity and air conditioning, opening-day business was already brisk. Some patrons were loyal customers, having visited Fleisher’s in Kingston or its booth at the Rhinebeck farmers’ market last summer. Sydney Ratner, a resident of New York City who maintains a second home in Kingston, was one. Her experience with Fleisher’s explains a lot about its success. “Once you eat this meat, you don’t go back (to supermarket cuts). It’s expensive, but it’s well worth it.”

The prices are indeed steep, with pork tenderloin selling for $9.25 per pound, steak filets for $12.99, aged shell steak for $22.99, lamb loin chops for $14.99 and kielbasa for $8.29. But many people are willing to pay a premium for a food product that flies in the face of an agricultural industrial complex,

whose emphasis on the bottom line has resulted in practices that many consumers consider inhumane, unhealthy and environmentally detrimental.

“There are three reasons why people come to Fleisher’s,” said Jessica Applestone, taking time out from the busy counter. “One is philosophical, concerning the humane treatment of animals, the way they’re slaughtered and the ramifications of what farmers do to the environment. The second is health … people are making a health choice to reduce toxicity in what they eat.”

The third reason is no less compelling: People are buying meat at Fleisher’s because it tastes so good. “I’m a huge foodie,” said Jessica, noting that her husband was a former chef, most recently at New World Home Cooking in Saugerties where the couple met; she was a waitress.

Fleisher’s products defy the notion of grass-fed beef as something that’s good for you but also tough, dry and chewy. One reason is breed: it carries only Angus beef, along with Berkshire pork, which is fattier and benefits from the animals having roamed around. It doesn’t serve veal out of season. The Applestones age their sirloin themselves, hanging the steers for four weeks. The process reduces the amount of meat by 15 percent to 20 percent (the outer part darkens and must be cut off) but results in a sublimely tender, flavorful product.

A tasty cut of meat starts with the supplier. “It’s much easier to do grass-fed, but not everyone does it well,” said Jessica. “You have to have good genetics, good farming methods and good grass.” Having initially “made a lot of mistakes,” Fleisher’s now offers a meat product “pretty close to perfect,” thanks to the couples’ extensive research.

“Our whole business is based on trust. We know our farmers and have seen the animals,” said Jessica, noting that the “no antibiotics,” “organic,” and “free-range” labels on meat at the supermarket are often misleading. For example, “no antibiotics” means there were none when the animal was slaughtered; the drugs may well have been given to it earlier it its life. And “free range” might mean the animal has limited access to a small, penned area, she said.

Finding suppliers that meet Fleisher’s requirements has in fact been the biggest challenge. The animals must be raised without antibiotics or hormones and spend most of their lives in a pasture eating grass. The standards for pigs are a bit different, since they are omnivores.

“We’re not looking for organic beef, most of which is grain fed,” said Jessica. “It’s not a natural diet for ruminant animals, who are meant to eat grass.” Feeding animals corn, a practice that started after World War II for purely economic reasons, makes them sick, she said like a human subsisting on potato chips and candy as does life in cramped, dirty feedlots, which necessitates the administration of hormones and antibiotics.

Fleisher’s also requires the grain consumed by pigs and chickens be pesticide-free and grown locally. In addition, the farm has to be located within a three-hour drive of the store and, trickiest of all, it must have a large enough herd to provide a consistent product, which is important not only to the stores’ customers but also to the New York City and Hudson Valley restaurants Fleisher’s supplies.

“There are a lot of farms with eight to 15 animals, but our suppliers have to have 50 to 80 head,” said Jessica. The business was finally successful in locating two suppliers for beef that meet all those requirements. One is a farmer located near Binghamton who takes his cattle to Mississippi in the winter so they can eat grass year-round.

Fleisher’s gets an average of four steers a week, which Josh then butchers into various cuts. Though butchering runs in his family his grandfather and great-grandfather had a kosher butcher business in Brooklyn he learned the craft through an apprenticeship.

Fleisher’s carries organic free-range chickens. The Applestones would rather carry pastured chickens: “birds foraging for worms and bugs out in a field, with a hawk occasionally getting one of them,” said Jessica. The problem is a technicality: all meat sold in a retail store must be slaughtered in a federally certified slaughterhouse, a requirement that precludes the farmer who can’t afford to comply.

In the case of chickens, the cost would be prohibitive: Jessica said Fleisher’s wants to limit the price to $3 per pound, but paying to have pastured chickens (which are produced by very small suppliers) slaughtered in a federally sanctioned slaughterhouse would raise the cost to about $20 a pound. Chickens could easily be slaughtered on the farm safely and cleanly, so the provision doesn’t make sense, she said. Only farmers selling directly from the farm and at farmers’ markets are allowed to slaughter their own chickens.

With their two stores going strong, the Applestones expect to turn a profit this year, despite escalating fuel costs (they have two trucks making deliveries several times a week to their restaurant clients). They have a staff of 10, and have added local produce. The Rhinebeck shop also has an upstairs room that they plan to use for wine-and-cheese tastings and other gastronomic events.

The cost of starting up the business far exceeded the couples’ initial investment of $50,000. A new cooler alone cost $20,000. An ongoing challenge is that the operation requires a lot of up-front cash: The animals are purchased from the farmer while they’re still walking around, but the business doesn’t get paid until six weeks later, when the product is sold. Misfortunes happen, such as the fire in a slaughterhouse that resulted in two weeks’ worth of lost meat.

The Applestones business equation has a very large theme, according to Jessica: “I’ve always wanted to do something to change the world. This does. If I make one person understand what big business is doing to the environment, it’s made my day.”

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