Butcher Pat LaFrieda Building the American Dream

Pat LaFrieda is New York’s butcher, but he’s more than that.  He’s an entrepreneur in the truest sense.  The third generation of a family owned and operated butcher business, he has continued running it with the same principles of hard work and quality that his father and grandfather did.  But while maintaining those traditions, he added innovation and has established his family business as the leading butcher in New York, and a model for other companies to follow.  Pat’s most recent move– a new Filet Mignon steak sandwich will be sold exclusively at Citi Field in New York, starting next week.  He stopped by the SiriusXM studios earlier this week to talk about the new venture with Ron Bennington.  Excerpts from the interview appear below.

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Ron Bennington: I don’t think we have a well-known chef in New York City who doesn’t go to you for product.

Pat LaFrieda: Well thank you, we’re lucky to work with New York’s best chefs.

Ron Bennington: And you are the guy who came up with this huge jump ahead in hamburgers that for years I guess nobody understood that hamburger meat was just like, a byproduct?

Pat LaFrieda: Right, for many years ground beef was made with trimmings and what was left over, but my grandfather had a different philosophy in that we always use the same cuts of meat, and whole cuts of meat, never trimmings, and always domestic products. So, when big hamburger makers are making tens of thousands of pounds an hour for the lowest bidder, they’re not worried about where the meat comes from; whereas what we always did was make the best ground beef, so 15 years ago when there was this big hamburger revolution, it was just natural that all the chefs came to us for the best ground beef that you could make, and then I tweaked my grandfather’s blend so many times that we have well over 50 blends so that we have restaurants that are located right near each other that have very different flavor profiles from each other, and it’s very important, especially in new York City, that everyone has their own niche and their own flavor.

Ron Bennington: I think that the place where it shows genius with you is that you didn’t get the first blend and say, this is our blend, this is what we sell. Because most people think of branding that way. At least in a corporate world, and I think this is important for Americans to think about because I think now that we’re in this place that we are, it’s really going to be entrepreneurs and family businesses that pull us out of it, and you did something that I think no corporation would ever do.

Pat LaFrieda: Right, because like we tell our employees, you don’t work for me, we work for our customers, so our product was always about making it for our customers. Not saying this is Pat LaFrieda brand and good for the brand, it just so happened it was great for the brand. That what we were doing by not concentrating on our brand, by concentrating on our customer’s brands, and making iconic burgers like Shake Shack and tweaking those blends so it worked great on their flattop in the park when they first opened – custom tailoring all of that for our customers and working for them was what made us different.

Ron Bennington: I’m sure you got tons of calls saying give me the Shake Shack blend. Give me the same thing. So, as a businessperson how do you not just do the easy thing and just start sending that out?

Pat LaFrieda: Because I think that’s where a lot of companies would make the mistake and send it out, but when you work with guys like Danny Meyer and the president of Shake Shack, Randy Garutti and you shake on it and your word is everything in business, so when a restaurant calls and says, hey, I want the Shake Shack blend, I’m like, that’s their exclusive blend, but we’re going to make you one for you. Let’s start off with what steaks do you like to eat? We’ll translate that into a burger blend and we’ll make something specific to you. It’s not like you’re going to go tell people, hey I have the Shake Shack blend, are you? No, consumers want to come to your restaurant because of what you’re bringing to the table and if they want Shake Shack they’ll go to Shake Shack. I usually win that argument and we make them something unique.

Ron Bennington: Alright, now you’re doing something with Citi Field which is the original filet mignon steak sandwich. Now, of course Philadelphia famous for the cheesesteak. This is a whole different situation and I don’t think anyone’s every really made the filet mignon steak sandwich work yet.

Pat LaFrieda: No, no one even gets a regular steak sandwich right, and the Philly Cheesesteak, sure it’s great especially after a few beers, but really it’s not a great culinary experience and that’s usually made with shaved, imported Australian beef knuckles. You put so much else on it that you don’t taste it anymore. What we wanted to do was — we always loved what Citi Field did with the food there. Like, going to a Mets game it’s no longer about eating stale pretzels or bad hot dogs. You can get really great food there like Shake Shack, like Blue Smoke, or Catch of the Day, but the one thing they were missing was a steak sandwich. So, in speaking to the Wilpons very recently and talking about that, I suggested a family recipe where it was something that we’ve made in our family for many years and a couple days later they had me in and I cooked one for them, and they said that no ball park would ever work as fast as they do. There’s always a lot of red tape and politics involved and sponsorship money. They’re like, Pat, we open in two weeks, we need this product and we don’t have it, and then here you go. On the 7th, we’ll be opening up a concession and we’ve never done that before.

Ron Bennington: We were eating your sandwich before you came in. It’s fantastic, but also, terrific bread. There’s great, great bread.

Pat LaFrieda: It’s very important. We’re the meat guys, but we’re carb freaks. Not only does it have to be fresh, it has to be of a great quality. We think outside of New York it’s too airy, this is actually from a great bakery in New Jersey, Hudson Bakery, but besides that, it needs a little bit of love before you serve it so you have to toast it right before and it’s important.

Ron Bennington: How do you – when you’re working with so many people now how do you keep the quality control going, because I’m sure they all want the best steak every day.

Pat LaFrieda: Sure they do. But we’re very exclusive as to who we sell to and our operations start at 6 p.m., a lot of people don’t know, we start at 6 p.m. every night. So, under the USDA government oversight, which we have a USDA inspector in our building at all times, we start cutting meat at 6 p.m. to be delivered the next morning. Nothing gets cut ahead of time, but working all night gives us the ability to get all these custom blends done and done in a fashion not just with the government oversight, but with my oversight. So I worked all night last night and this is the time I would normally be sleeping and then I get up and do it all over again the next day. So it’s a family-run business meaning I’m there, my dad comes every morning at 3:30 in the morning and then my cousin’s there at 7 a.m., so we’re 24 hours six days a week and you just don’t find that in many companies.

Ron Bennington: No, of course not, and again most of us would think, family business, what could be better? But you’re going to work harder to keep that going than anything else.

Pat LaFrieda: Yeah, I think I’ve taken nepotism to the next level because working with family is the most challenging thing, but it’s great that as we got busier in our history, I kept backing up the start time and I was the Army combat medic, I was in the Reserves for eight years so sleep deprivation – I’m fine with that. So I took the responsibility of being the guy to open, so sure, I could work all night long and be there and make sure everything is done right because all the magic is done at night with myself and the butchers and overseeing – like, we have a staff of 40 guys at night making sure that it all happens right.

Ron Bennington: How big was that business when you were a kid though? I mean, you didn’t have 40 butchers –

Pat LaFrieda: We had two broken down vans, two drivers, my dad was the butcher, he sometimes had an assistant, and every day off I worked with my dad and it was a very, very small company.

Ron Bennington: it was a small company, but it was a family business, it was working, you went to college, so what made you think we need to expand? Where did that drive even come from?

Pat LaFrieda: My first inclination that what we did was so different and so good was that restaurants that didn’t buy from us, like high-end restaurants, around the holidays or Memorial Day or Labor Day, the chefs and the owners were stopping by our place to get meat for their homes. They didn’t want to get the meat that they use for their restaurants but they were getting it from my place for their homes. I said, we need to get the message out there that what we’re doing is different, and yeah, I went off to college – being in this business is not what my dad envisioned for me. I was the generation that was supposed to go off and do something better and not work in 34 degree temperature all night, and so forth. But just using my marketing skills of getting the word out there and visiting chefs, so if I started then at 3:30 in the morning, I cut meat, processed orders, invoiced the customers, then sometimes got into the van and made the deliveries. I would come back to LaFrieda Meats, change in what we called a “cloffice” it was so small it could’ve been a closet or an office, changed into a suit and went back on the road and met guys like Joe Bastianich and Lidia Bastianich and sometimes I would be embarrassed because the day after I made a deal with them to start selling them meat, I had to make a delivery to them. So there’s Joe in the restaurant and I was in a suit the day before, and now I’m in a fleece and jeans and work boots and I’m carrying meat into his restaurant, but I kind of ducked and got away with that, but that’s how we grew the business.

Ron Bennington: Just slugging it out every day.

Pat LaFrieda: Slugging it out, grassroots, but the experience of working from the bottom up and knowing everything that happens in your company is priceless because a driver comes to me and says, Pat, I just fell down a flight of stairs at XYZ restaurant because it’s at a 45 degree angle, the staircase, or steeper, and by the way, I had left the trap door open and someone else fell in after me, I’ve been there and I know what they’ve experienced and I know how to fix those problems and I know how to teach my guys and train them every step of the way.

Ron Bennington: When you go out in New York City to have a meal I’m sure every chef wants to give you the best steak you’ve ever had in your life –

Pat LaFrieda: Yes.

Ron Bennington: But can you just say, I’d like a piece of fish, I want a bowl of pasta?

Pat LaFrieda: I love pasta, and I love fish, and that’s not the problem when I go out. I try to go in under the radar, if I don’t tell the chef that I’m there they get very, very insulted. So then it comes to the point where my guest or guests and I get everything on the menu sent out, and then you’re embarrassed that you can’t finish it. So I’m like, here you take this. No, no no, I’m stuffed. So you try to move things around on the plate so it looks like you’ve enjoyed it, which 9 times out of 10 you do, without insulting anyone because as the waiters coming [you say] take this, take this, take this, because you can’t possibly finish everything a chef wants to send out.

Ron Bennington: Pat thanks so much for coming by. It was just a real pleasure to get a chance to talk to you.

Pat LaFrieda: Thank you for having me.

Visit  lafrieda.com for more info and follow them on twitter  @patlafrieda.

You can hear this interview in its entirety exclusively on SiriusXM satellite radio.  Not yet a subscriber?  Click here for a free trial subscription.

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You can learn more about Ron Bennington’s two interview shows, Unmasked and Ron Bennington Interviews at RonBenningtonInterviews.com.

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