 Hi, and welcome to Hawaii Food and Farmers' Series. I'm your host today, Matthew Johnson, where we meet with Hawaii's farmers, foodies, and everyone who cares about Hawaii's local food industry. As always, you can join the conversation by tweeting in at atthinktechhi.com, and you can also join the conversation by calling on the hotline at 808-374-2014. As always, we have super exciting guests on the show, and with me today we have Chuck Wakeman with Butcher and Bird. It's going to be Honlou's hottest new butchery, and same with Chuck. So Chuck, thank you so much for joining me on the show. Thanks, Matt. So yeah, you and I met probably a couple of months ago. You've been working out of the food hub in Kalihi. Mm-hmm. Tell us a little bit about Butcher and Bird. Butcher and Bird is going to be a local full-service butcher in Delhi. Full service meaning everything will be freshly displayed in a meat case. You come to the counter, you interact with the butcher. You can request special cut items, things that you can't find in big box stores because we are utilizing whole animal, which gives us all the cuts you can imagine. Also with that, we'll be doing our own fresh sausages. We're building out a 40-foot cure room to cure on charcuterie, so salamis, chorizo, prosciutto, the whole gambit there. And we'll also be doing lunch service 11 to 3 daily with sandwiches and sausages and the like. Wow. So I definitely know that there's been places that I've spoken about or even tried to do this concept before, but this is really going to be kind of, at least as I know on the one of the first type full-service butchery like you're talking about. Is that correct? Definitely the first one in a long time. You know, I talked to a lot of the older generation and they always remember, you know, all my mom would go down to the butcher and get our cuts on a Sunday and things like that. So I think it's just been a while since that's been here. And I think the challenge has been that I've seen the past is a lot of chefs will get interested in being a butcher and they'll try that approach to be a butcher. For me, I was an apprentice and came through to a journeyman in a meat program. Okay. So I understand the retail side of butchering. So that, I think, gives me a bit of a leg up and then I did spend time in kitchen's cooking, which added to my skill set. And now I'm kind of able to bring that all together to where I do have, you know, fresh meats and sausages, but also I'm able to, you know, compose dishes and plates to be able to have an outlet to sell my food as well. Okay. Hey, because like you mentioned to me before, there's a difference between being a butcher and then there's also just people who are a proportioner, whether it's kind of like how you break apart an animal where there's definitely more of a craft and an art to what you're doing that maybe people don't have as much of an appreciation for. Absolutely. And a lot of that, you know, it's meat cutter versus butcher. A meat cutter, for the most part, things will come in, boneless, you know, it's called a subprimal or it's a smaller piece where they are, they're taking in there and they're portioning steaks for a counter or packaging and things like that, which makes sense. You can get it like safe way or even whole foods. Right, which is a business model for a big store like that. It makes sense because if you think about cubic footage, which is what everything comes in here, cubic footage, right? If you hang a side of beef in a refrigerated box versus 10 cases of rib eyes, you're paying for so much more potential if you're buying, you know, the boxed beef, right? So a lot of that skill has been lost for the whole animal butchery and understanding how to extract all the cuts and how to cost them properly to where you're selling them and making the proper margins to keep the product flowing essentially, yeah. Hey, because you were talking about before where, you know, because you really have to utilize a full animal, especially if you're going to be, and that's one of the great things about what you're doing is you're going to be using local animals as much as possible. So you were kind of talking about like the different types of cuts that you have to do and really how to utilize as much of the animal as possible. Talk a little bit about that where, you know, people are obviously familiar with the steaks or the hams or whatnot. You're talking about some of the different things that, you know, you're talking about adding value to different parts of the animal. Talk a little bit about that. So sausage is definitely the biggest outlet for a value-added product, right? Every time you break down animal, you end up with lots of trimming that necessarily can't be used for stew or steaks or different cuts. Basically, you take that, you grind it, you go through a sausage making technique, emulsifying, adding seasonings, stuffing in a casing, and you make it into something that does not only perceive value, it's a value. People love sausage. Yeah. So knowing how to make sausage or even like charcuterie and things like that gives you an outlet for some of the off cuts that are normally just sold as, you know, ground pork or ground beef, which helps you with your margin mix. So talking a little bit about, like, I mean, I think even for myself, I think people are familiar with the term charcuterie, but really what is that and what is your charcuterie going to look like? Right. So charcuterie encompasses a lot of different aspects. The one that we're going to be focusing on is dry-caring meats. So, you know, hundreds of years ago when people wanted preserved meat, they would salt it. They would hang it in caves where the environment is usually around 62 degrees and, you know, pretty low humidity. And over time, you suck out water, you control temperature. You're creating an environment where the meat can dry out, but not spoil. Something that's not conducive to bad bacterial growth. The side product or byproduct of that is it makes for a really delicious product. You know, the flavors change. You get certain molds that grow on the meat that give almost like that blue cheesy flavor. That's like kind of like that. Almost like the crusting, the casing. Yeah, you'll see that white like fuzz almost on the outside, but it's mold. And but it's good mold. And so that's a flavor profile that you can't just create. You can't go into a lab and, you know, mix something up and add it to meat and like, oh, this tastes like salami. It's something that takes time and skill to create those flavors. So obviously, you don't have a cave that you're using. So talk about, so you're going to be opening up a butcherm bird. So it's a new, like you said, full service butchery that's going to be located in Kakako. Talk a little bit about the actual space itself. Yeah. So well, off the charcuterie subject, right when you walk in, there's going to be a 40 foot cure room, which is basically a, you know, temperature and humidity controlled box. We're going to cut a three by three viewing window. So when you walk in, you can see all the different salamis and things hanging in there. After that, you'll pass that. It'll come into a deli display case with all our different cheeses, meats, and breads on the charcuterie side. Then there'll be a eight foot fresh case with all the pork, lamb, beef, fresh sausage. And behind that, you'll be able to see all the production going on. You'll see the bandsaw, you know, grinders and all these old school butcher shop things that you don't really see much of anymore. And, you know, I'll be back there cutting away and waiting for people to come in so I can greet them and, you know, not only get them what they're asking for, maybe educating them to find things that they didn't even know they needed or wanted, you know. Right. Like, oh, I'm making a marinara sauce. Well, traditionally, a marinara sauce, you want to start with pork neck bones, because it gives a lot of collagen and body to the sauce. So, hey, I've got pork neck bones. Why don't you start with these? And, you know, it's a lot of education, I think, at the beginning. Yeah. Well, especially since there hasn't been something like this, like you said, in O'ahu, in Hawaii for, you know, a really long time. So, I'm sure a lot of people, you know, like I was saying before, like kind of have a general idea of what the concept may be like, but until they actually walk in there, it's probably going to be, you know, you're probably going to be getting a lot of questions and kind of maybe some confused people when they first walk in. Yeah, absolutely. But for me, that's one of the things I love about being, you know, in a full service butcher shop is the exchange of ideas. And people that shop there are usually pretty passionate about what they're doing. Yeah. And as am I, so when you get that flow, that exchange going on, to me, it's really fun and people get into it, you know, they come back and they tell you like, oh, man, I tried this. It was really, really great. You know, here, why don't you try this next time? And you get the regulars coming through just because it's exciting. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, I grew up just outside of Philadelphia, so I remember going to the old Italian markets and I imagine it's going to have like a similar vibe to that where you don't want to be carrying it. Pick out your meats and you're on the first-name basis with your butcher. So that's very exciting. So the shop is going to be in Kakaako at the salt area. So yeah, talk a little bit about, so in this space, you're going to have the Shakuridri room, the viewing room. Talk a little bit about what else, like what kind of products can someone expect to see. And then we'll also then talk about where you're getting your supply of products from. Okay. Yeah, so, you know, as well as the meats, we'll have pretty much everything that goes with meat, pickles, mustards, fresh breads, all the things that you would want to take to a barbecue, let's say, or if you're going to make a stew, something like that. So definitely meat-centric, but also I should touch on the fact that in the name Butcher and Bird, Bird is my wife's nickname. So she does aerial burlesque and she's on the silks and she's flying around like a bird. She has a little bit different diet than I do. She is a very clean eater, lots of veggies, a little bit of meat here and there. And what we notice is when her and I go out to places together, it's usually one or the other. Like we're either at a vegan restaurant where I'm like, or she's had some meaty place where she's going, so we wanted to have that dichotomy of a place where anybody can come together and eat. So we'll have a bird side of the menu too, where it's going to be roasted vegetables and salads and things like that. So that's the other side that you're going to be able to find there. It's not just meat. I mean, it feels up to me to be, but there's lots of other things going on there as well. Well, I mean, I think it's a great idea other than the fact to appease your wife, so she'll come and hang out with you at work as well and maybe help out. But yeah, definitely diets are changing and people are looking for more mixture of foods. And I think you might have a combination of maybe people that had been anti-meat before because the traditional large meat industry does have a lot of issues with it. So I think the fact that you're kind of going this small scale, locally sourced meats where it's like, hey, you know your butcher and having those conversations about the meat, where did it come from, how was it prepared, more of that background, which I think is really what people are looking for. Oh, for sure. So you may even get some cumbers of people that were kind of anti-meat, but kind of learning your story and kind of learning more about the whole process might be willing to try it out again. Yeah, for sure. And also too, we just took a trip to Portland about a month ago, and it was great because the restaurants that we went to there, usually when she starts rattling off her allergies or her restrictions, it's uncomfortable sometimes because she feels like she's asking the kitchen to do something that might be difficult or whatever. And I've always told her, I said, you know, any kitchen worth at salt should be able to come up with a nice vegetable dish or something like that on the fly because that means they're cooking things fresh, right? Yeah. And so in Portland, we noticed she would give them their allergies. They'd have like four or five different menus. Oh, nightshades and this and that. Oh, here's a menu for you. You can order anything off this menu. So we really want to be as accommodating as possible so anybody can come in there and have something to eat. Cool. So unfortunately, we've got to take a quick break. But yeah, we'll be back in about one minute and we'll talk more about your background. I want to hear kind of like, how did you fall into this? So yeah, we're going to take a quick break and we'll be right back. Hey, Aloha. Standard Energy Man here on Think Tech Hawaii where community matters. This is the place to come to think about all things energy. We talk about energy for the grid, energy for vehicles, energy and transportation, energy and maritime, energy and aviation. We have all kinds of things on our show, but we always focus on hydrogen here in Hawaii because it's my favorite thing. That's what I like to do. But we talk about things that make a difference here in Hawaii, things that should be a big changer for Hawaii. And we hope that you'll join us every Friday at noon on Standard Energy Man and take a look with us at new technologies and new thoughts on how we can get clean and green in Hawaii. Aloha. Hi, I'm Ethan Allen, host on Think Tech Hawaii of Pacific Partnerships in Education. Every other Tuesday afternoon at 3 p.m. I hope you'll join us as we explore the value, the accomplishments and the challenges of education here in the Pacific Islands. And welcome back to White Food and Farmer Series. I'm your host today, Matthew Johnson. We're talking with Chuck Wakeman with Butcher and Bert. And yeah, talking about Hawaii's newest full-service butchery. And so, yeah, we're kind of talking about the store that's going to be opening up in Kakaako at Salt. And before I forget, do a plug for the store. When's the opening going to be happening? We're looking to open around April 15th. Okay. So we're excited we're building right now and things are coming together. It's, you know, it's the vision is coming together and it's really exciting to see. Yeah, that's great. So one of the things I want to talk about is a little bit your background. So how like you mentioned before that you had working at the whole ox before, which also used to be in Kakaako. That's right. Yeah, how did you get into slaughtering him, breaking apart animals? What happened? Well, if I would have started that at age five, they probably would have profiled me as some sort of weirdo, but fortunately for me, it happened when I moved to Chicago at about age 24. I moved there with literally $40 in my pocket, not a lot of prospects. I love the city. I just wanted to be there for some reason. Where did you grow up? I grew up in the Bay Area through Pennsylvania. And then, you know, eventually ended up in Chicago. And so when I got there, it was just one of those things like don't want to age myself too much, but I'm looking through the paper for a job, right? In the classifieds, circling them with the old red pen, you know? And I saw I said, you know, butcher, you know, experience needed, you know, and I thought that's why I'm pretty sure that's a union job. So at least if I get in here, you know, maybe I get a trade and something to start off on. And so I went down to the shop and it was just a local butcher shop in Lincoln Park in Chicago. And the owner was like, oh, you know, I'm kind of looking for somebody with experience, you know, sorry. And I told him, he said, you know, I don't have experience, but I'm young. I'll work hard, you know, give me a shot. Maybe we can check it out. And he said, OK, he called me back, said, come in, let's work for a couple weeks. If it fits for you and, you know, if it fits for us and that kind of thing. And I think pretty much right off the bat, I loved it. For me, I always just say it's making big rocks into little rocks, right? So they throw a slab of meat on the table and I have my tools in my hands. And, you know, I take this and I break it down, break it down. And then it becomes this and it looks beautiful. And I put it in a case and I can see the process all the way through until it goes out the door and it's gratification, right? I was fortunate enough to be in a shop where it was mostly old-timers. There was a guy, he was about 62. The other guy was 70. He did it just because he still enjoyed it. And then the owner was about 45 years old and he'd been doing it since he was 13 for his uncle. So the knowledge in there was insane. And these guys kind of realized that there's not a lot of young people trying to learn the craft that they've already known. So they wanted to dump as much knowledge as they could into me. And they really, like, they really trained me well. They showed me as much as they possibly could. And it was a shop where we still did whole animal butchery, which I thought was just butchery. I thought, like, everybody does it that way, right? So whole animal versus, I mean, is what you're going to do with your shop not going to be whole animal or what? No, it will. It'll be whole animal. You always have to supplement some cuts because, you know, you're always going to sell a ton of steaks, like rib-eyes and strips. So you would back up on everything else if you just did whole animal. Gotcha. So you do as much whole animal as possible and then supplement some of the cuts. When I left there and got a job at a grocery store in San Diego when I was moving, I just saw boxes of beef. And, you know, everything was already, and I was, well, where's all the whole animals? Like, where's the sides and where's the quarters? Well, we don't do that. So that's when I realized how fortunate I was to have learned from the beginning, like the really old-school classic way of cutting meat. Yeah, you almost had like the fine dining part of butchery and then you kind of went and worked at a fast food place and, you know, wasn't going to be nearly as impressed with that. Yeah. And the owner was a German sausage maker too, so that kind of helped. Okay. So I got to learn from a German sausage maker. I was like, all right, yeah, it'll be okay. Nice. So, how'd you get to Hawaii? So Hawaii, you know, came for vacation, served without a wetsuit one time. I said, okay, this is the only way to do this, and the cold, and I'll add no more. So I moved here and, you know, I was looking for a place to work as a butcher. I didn't want to work in a grocery store. And I saw a, out on Craigslist at the Holox, where Bob McGee was looking for a butcher. And I said, yeah, it sounds great. So I went down there and he gave me a shot and saw how I cut meat and was like, wow, welcome. And, you know, after a while, I've always enjoyed cooking. And I decided I wanted to, you know, get on the hotline and start cooking at age 30. And I did. And I jumped in and got in way over my head and learned a lot. I went and worked with Chris Kajioka, vintage cave for a year. And I mean, I went from a burger cook to really high in fine dining, which was a massive learning curve, but learned a lot. And I worked at Pig and the Lady as their butcher. But what I noticed is every kitchen I went into, my skills as a butcher were always way more unique than another cook or a chef. Right. And, you know, after a while, I just kind of realized the cooking thing's fun and everything. But I kind of feel responsibility to share my craft with other people. Yeah. Yeah. Great. Talk a little bit about your supply of product. Where are you getting, like what kind of, you mentioned some of the meats, pork, beef, lamb, chicken. I think probably a lot of people that maybe aren't in the industry, don't really have an appreciation for the variety of different meats that are available. Can you talk a little bit about what you're going to have and where they're coming from? Absolutely. So, beef, be using Canola Cattle Company. They recently opened a slaughterhouse in Kapolei. I think it was last March. And it's been a while since we've had a USDA approved functioning state-of-the-yard slaughterhouse. So it's great. They have their own brand, but they also bring in all meats from the islands and they can process there. So if I found something special and unique that I liked, they would process it for me there and I could have it in the shop. As far as pork, I'm going to be using Pono Pork, which my old friend, Bob McGee, he's facilitating that. They use pigs from Waianae, Mountain View Dairy Farm. They use a Korean farming method, which is a really clean, great way to raise pigs. And also, I want to bring in pigs from Malama Farms on Maui, which is, they use a Berkshire hog, which is kind of like the wagyu of pork. I mean, it's really an amazing, amazing product. The fat on it is super soft and it just crisps up and it's great product. So I'm going to bring that in. We can get lamb, venison. There's also another cattle company that I've been talking to in Kula on Maui that are actually doing some grain finished local beef. So I mean, you can get plenty of grass fed, grass finished, which is a great option and people are into it. But I think it'd be fun to kind of check out maybe some of the grain finished stuff too, just to offer like a contrast and flavor profiles. But there's a lot of ranchers and farmers out there that they have the product. They just need an outlet. So that's what I want to provide. I'm sure your suppliers are getting very excited. I mean, especially if it's, because I know that's one of the biggest challenges like you mentioned, traditionally, if someone is raising an entire hog, they've got an entire hog that they need to sell and make something happen with. So if you're able to take that whole animal off their hands, literally, that'll be a huge benefit for them. Yeah, absolutely. And in the past, the biggest outlet for a lot of the local ranchers and farmers has been through restaurants, which it's a good way, I think, to get recognition and get your brand out there and get feedback on flavor and that kind of thing. But a butcher shop will allow me to move more of their product and utilize it in ways that sometimes restaurants, they don't have the facilities to do. And they end up with a lot of offcuts that they're kind of like, I don't really know what to do with the shanks and the feet and the heads and stuff like that. So let's talk a little bit more about the actual shop. So you have an event coming up this weekend, yeah? This Saturday, Salt is doing a bar crawl and block party. Okay, it's like St. Patty's Day. So I made a corned beef flavored sausage. It tastes just like corned beef. And we're going to put cabbage and kind of spear mustard on there and pickle and serve sausages to people drinking beer all night. It's kind of like a backyard barbecue, pretty much. That sounds perfect. I'm definitely going to be down there and I'll be one of those guys drinking beer. Awesome. So then talk about, I guess, someone like what your future plans. I mean, obviously, this is a big step for you, creating your own shop. But kind of talking about the meat industry in Hawaii as a whole, where hopefully this is going to be a great initial outlet that makes it a little bit easier for some of the ranchers and some of the other meat producers. But what do you, I mean, what else do you think, where do you think this is all going? Do you have potentially plans for additional shops? Or I'm sure you've been kind of thinking about this because the space you're going to have is relatively small. Right. I think you said 1,500 square feet. About that, yeah. But what are kind of things do you think can be done, either by you or other groups out there? Yeah, what I've noticed is consistency is something that I've had, that I've struggled with with some of the producers. And it's not any individual producer. It's usually there's like a conglomerate, right, that you're going to buy your product through. I won't name names, but I've used ones in the past where, one week you get something from this ranch and it's great. And then the next week you get it from a different ranch in the conglomerate. And then it's good and it's up and down. So I would love to see just more collaboration within these different conglomers, to where they start kind of standardizing things. The breed, the feed, the gestation period, how long are they growing for, when you're harvesting them, all that kind of stuff. Just to see a little bit more consistent product. I think I'll be able to help with some of that as far as like the guys at Canola Cattle Company, they trust my opinion about things. When I first went out and met them, they say, oh here, come in our coolers and check out the meat in here. And let me know what you think about the fat on the animals and the intramuscular fat. And for me, I have enough experience and knowledge where I can tell them like, oh yeah, this feels a little loose. The flesh is a little off or something in this net. And they're real receptive. They want to produce the best product they can as well. So it's good, I think, for there to be somebody at the end of the chain, which is me, sending feedback back up through the chain, and hopefully affecting some differences. Well, unfortunately, that's all the time that we have. But Chuck, thank you so much for coming on the show. I know I learned a lot about just what it takes to open up a butcher shop. And so good luck with the venture. I'm excited to come by and check it out. Definitely coming by this Saturday to see your pop-up. Awesome. And yeah, so thank you for joining us, Hawaii Food and Farmer Series. We're here every other Thursday. And we'll see you in two weeks. Aloha.