c-so how long have you been a butcher?

a-Well actually the whole story is this is my family’s business. So I grew up here. My dad purchased it from the original owner in 1990. It was just a deli then expanded to the butcher shop in 1995 then we opened that. And since then we’ve also expanded to catering, whole bakery. We do some off-site catering for TV studios, we do NBC. Breakfast, lunch, and sometimes dinner services. We do catering and bakery. Stuff like that as well. We had a couple other locations but since then have sold. We did have like Bethesda. And we had location on AU campus. Now it is just here. We have a 2,000 square foot kitchen. We do all production everything from smoking our own beef to baking bread, making all the pastries and cakes. You know we’re roasting a couple hundred pounds of roast beef several times a week. Roasted turkey breast, smoke turkey breast, you know all that going on in that kitchen, you know all the time in order to keep up. I mean making cole slaw, we make our own cole slaw. Straight from the cabbage. We make crab cakes, we make chicken breast-we grill ‘em and we fry ‘em. There’s a lot of room cause you know that’s what my dad wanted to have. The purity of the business and wanted to build on that but gave him something that gives him full control you know cause you can, you can buy everything from different companies. But he always he found something that he could improve on and you know when he goes on these trips and vacations like he went to Montreal a year or two ago, and he tried this smoked brisket that they only serve at this one deli in Montreal and he wanted to recreate it. So he has actually been working on it in his spare time for like a year and a half now trying to recreate it and he’s almost got the recipe so we should be ready to run with that. It’s a wonderful product.

c-so there is a lot of trying new things different products?

a-You know he's always doing that. He went to Spain last year, he went to Croatia, he said it’s the most beautiful place he’s ever been too. He’s actually got me tempted to go cause there’s a trip going there is September so… I don’t know if you’re familiar with Jose Andreas, he’s a, almost like a world-renowned chef, he actually lives a couple streets over that way. He owns Hoyamel, there’s like four restaurants that he owns downtown DC, he opened a new one in Las Vegas and he opened another one in Beverly Hills as well. He’s been on Iron Chef a couple times, I mean the guys just incredible and we’re teaming up with him in order to bring in some Spanish pork with him. And the pork that we are going to be carrying is just incredible. I mean it’s like Japanese Kohn Beef, but it’s pork, it’s just I can’t describe it other than it taste good, it’s just incredible. You know my dad tried it when he was over there and he was like I got to have it, so we’re gonna be the first people in the country to get it and if you’ve ever had, heard of Iberazville, or jamon, it’s a Spanish-cured ham sort of like brushutto is, that’s pretty popular right now, but currently the new round of tariffs that the government has put in on imported goods including like the jamons, the Glowfor cheeses stuff like that, that’s the tariff has gone from like 100% to 200 400%, so a jamon that use to be $140 a pound, is now almost $1200 a pound retail. Super incredible expensive. So we’re getting raw product in which is luckily not part of the tariff but still it’s gonna be expensive you know? Your talking $30 a pound for pork. But it’s incredible. It’s gonna be great stuff. We’ve got a nice little press kit that we’re gonna be putting out, you know it should be arriving here by the end of May or June. It’s coming by boat so, uh we’re always working on something. We got a grill series that we do with a charitable event where we local celebrity chefs come in and give cooking demonstrations. Minimum donation we say $10 for Juvenile Diabetes Research and you know they get to get a copy of all the recipes the chef cooks for everybody you get to taste it, eat it, come in you can buy the products with a discount. So this year we actually got two top chef contestants Spike Mendleson and Fara Hall. Fara was on the last season that just ended. She’s the black lady with the big hair and the glasses. So she’ll be here. Hers is like May 31st. Spike which he was on season three or four, he’s doing May 17th. So you know that combined with you know doing the website, so I’m probably the key person that does a lot of the website stuff. I have a guy who does all the coding, but conceptually moving stuff up and down, verbage, checking pictures and all this stuff this combined with working here and what we do over there is my job.

c-so what is like a day in the life for you look like?

a-for me, I do spend quite a bit of time over here. Umm I don’t spend as much time cutting meat as I use to. We do have a, Pam, whom I’m sure you met, shes one of those classically trained butchers. She use to work down on Eastern Market with her dad at a shop down there and she had been there since she was like 10. So I mean she’s one of those that not only does she have a very warm personality that just takes people in, but she’s got an incredible memory. She knows pretty much anything about everything. She still teaches me stuff til this day. I mean I don’t think I’ve ever stopped learning. For me I would say more of the day to day operations. Checking inventory and purchasing, checking quantities, checking prices, speaking with purveyors, speaking with customers, we have quite a bit of traffic that comes in here on a regular basis, questions about can I get rattlesnake, or can you guys get some real kangaroo for the ambassador for Australia. Stuff like that you know what im doing behind the scenes im constantly on my phone sending emails. We’re constantly looking for new people so we always got ads out. You know mainly in addition to that its you know ordering and you know occasionally like to help out customers. Cause you can’t have too much of the back end you’ve got to have some interaction otherwise you’d go crazy. Got to keep in touch with who your customers are when your working. So, you know, everyday is different. I can’t say that everyday is the same. You gotta have, gotta like working with people more than anything else, not only customers, but all of the people that work for our company. You know we got probably 30-40 people who work for us and dealing with everybody’s problems or questions or you know it’s a constant balance you have to maintain. You know that’s one of the main things about this-you have to you can’t get a big head about yourself you always have to be grounded and you as I find out more and more as I learn more and more there’s there’s a point where I would say you just have to fight and kind of put yourself back if your in a conflict situation and always be a mediator you know. You have to be the person that they talk to so your kind of slash therapist balancing all of these different issues at a time it’s a and it doesn’t stop and even tho I go home, some days I may work til 9 o clock at night some days I get off early and go home at 5 but the phone doesn’t stop ringing you know ill get calls sometimes I get emails sometimes I get calls from vendors 6-7 in the morning you know this product is out is there something else we could send you problems here at the store when im not here physically can you give me an answer whats the deal with this can we get our hands on this? I would say im more of operations manager. Pam is official market manager now, I put myself on the website just because she doesn’t have an email address she’s not real big on that she’s more of a face to face call you at the most. So that’s just why I leave myself on the website as the first point of contact.

c-i think you've already talked about some of the newer things like where some products come from, but where do most of them come from, are they from all-over?

a-Primarily all of our beef is all over. Its all United States Black Angus Prime cattle. If you’re familiar with the grading system you’ve probably seen choice thrown around, select. They’re all grades of beef. The grading is determined based on the marbling that you find inside of the muscle so the more little lines of fat you’re gonna find the higher the grade of beef. Because in order to get something like that the farmer will have to invest the money or time into that cow in order to get him bigger and fatter. You need fat. Fat flavors things, fat keeps things moist. You can’t I mean you can have a straight grassfed animal that hasn’t been you know given to a feedlot so that he can get fat. You can eat it. It’s not gonna be as good, it’ll be a little leaner so you’ll have a greater chance of overcooking it. But everybody’s got deer, everybody has buffalo everybody’s got bison. Stuff like that you know those are all leaner animals by nature. But your not gonna get quality of a higher grade animal so we only use the prime. And you know that’s one of the niches that we harp for ourselves in addition to being one of the only full service butchers left in the city. We only deal with prime, the highest grade that you can get and dry age beef as well. There are two types of aging that you can do. Dry aging and wet aging. If you don’t age the beef, it’s not gonna be as good. Plain and simple. Fresh beef is a lot gamier it isn’t quite mellow it’s a lot tougher. So aging is necessary in order to make it more tender. Cause as it ages, whether its wet age, and I’ll explain that in a second, wet age or dry age, enzymes that are gonna come naturally help break down those fibers inside the muscle and basically make it more tender. It could give it a flavor as that process is happening the fat gets more flavor as well. The difference between wet aging and dry aging is basically wet aging is primarily how most places get their beef. It comes in a plastic pryozap bag, and it’s broken down by the muscle you’ll get a whole tenderloin you’ll get a whole boneless ribeye or bone-in ribeye in a plastic bag and most grocery stores will just open the bag and then cut your steak from that. Its probably been aged for a couple of weeks inside the bag but the difference between us is dry aging is that we actually get the whole animal and in order to break it down on all sides that’s when the butcher comes into play. It takes quite a bit of skill and in order to properly cut up apart his shoulder for instance because if you make one wrong move your damaging the results you could something wrong and not have a beautiful looking set of steaks you'll have a mish-mash of different types of things so what you see here each steak starts from a whole shoulder that we got and it takes quite a bit of skill. Apprenticeships usually last years in order for them to get to Pam's level or you know my level. I'm still learning-by all means I'm never gonna be finished learning. You know all the different names that people have for cuts available it's amazing you know they've got different styles of cutting as well. Europeans cut beef differently French cut meat differently than English do. It's, it's all a mish-mash of different styles. For instance we have a lot of diplomats in this area ambassadors stuff like that and they're looking for a specific type of beef, for instance they'll come in here looking for onglet (en-gley) and not a people know that that is what we call hanger steak its a uh diaphram muscle that's basically you only get one piece per animal it's a very, very tender very flavorful piece of beef. but it's very, very limited in supply so you mean you know if someone were to go into their regular grocery store and say can i get some onglet please the guy would look at you and be like i don't know what you're talking about what what is that? you know you know so, i always try and use the sweetbread story. you know if you got a couple of customers who go into a store, whole foods, and asked the butcher behind the counter for sweetbread he'd say over there in the bakery department you know not even thinking that come on now you know what sweetbreads are, sweetbreads are a gland of beef. but he probably doesn't even carry them. even if he didn't have them because they probably don't sell them either. so you know constantly uh, all this stuff is going around in my head so im sorry if im jumping around or anything a little bit.

c-that's fine so i know that you said that the business has been around since 1995, that's still like around 14 years so how has it changed since day one when you first opened to now?

a-i think we have definitely carved out a better niche for ourselves. business has grown steadily over this time mainly because we have gotten a lot of very good publicity. whether its newspaper articles or the washingtonian occasionaly or i mean or pictures or photo shoots weve got a lot of artists who want to come in and take pictures of us or the meat downstairs you know we had tlc here in december on an episode of home made simple and it just aired last saturday. so i've got a lot of people coming in here and asking me i saw you on tv it hasn't gone to my head i'm not a big movie star yet. but uh its pretty cool. that and we do radio spots on um ive got i think ive built a relationship with the guys from 106.7 if you've ever listed to that

c-i rarely listen to the radio.

a-well there's a show during the day its from like 10-3 and its like 2 my age guys 30 year old guys they talk about everything in their lives and they do food tastings and samples stuff like that so weve come in a couple times and cooked some rattlesnake, and buffalo, and all this stuff. its pretty cool you know so we do giveaways and gift certificates stuff like that so its kinda keep up fresh in peoples minds uh i think that's key cuz we are a little back in the city so we don't get a lot of foot traffic that would maybe downtown or even georgetown uh so people usually come when they want something they'll do a butcher in dc search and we'll be the ones to pop up everytime.

c-yeah that was mine.

a- yeah and its your not gonna get little specialty cuts and a lot of people like the fact that we built ourselves a reputation of knowing our clients you know you walk in the front door and either me myself or Pam or one of the other guys behind the counter will recognize you and ask you how was that steak that you bought last week? Or, how did it turn out for you? You won't get that at grocery stores like whole foods. But i mean its even the ones that come in every four to six months you know and pam i always joke with her about her memory. her memory is so good she'll remember people that she hasn't seen in a couple years stuff like that she'll just see them and instantly hey how are you? where've you been? you know. you know she was voted number uh best butcher in dc. city paper. they said that whole foods was the number one butcher in dc but is that because they have more locations? probably. so we're not as convenient because you have to come off the beaten path to find us but you know a butcher is a real butcher. not a whole foods that's a grocery store. they're serving the masses they're not catering to individual tastes.

c-so that's probably one of the main distinctions. you guys are probably carrying stuff that they wouldn't ever know.

a-no because it's not even something that they have even eaten before. you know they are just concerned with selling quanities and moving products in and out. we do a fair amount of business i mean you know a couple thousand pounds of chicken a week not to mention our beef which is a 4-5,000 pounds of beef a week.

c-that's a lot.

a-uh you know when we for holidays that's another story. i mean we sell about a thousand turkeys so thanksgiving here its you know its its so wierd because we have to actually rent trucks to store thanksgiving turkeys and we store the extra meat that we get in for christmas as well. i mean holidays are just astronomical. we basically have to regulate how many people are coming into the store. we give everybody a pick-up windows you have to come between your hour you know we can't cope with the lines the parking lot gets crazy. there is a full time parking attendant just for this lot.

c-yeah so its like that small little place, its like a family business

a-oh you should see it lunch time like on yesterday i mean the line to get in was up Mass just to turn in then when your in you have to drive around a few times just to find a parking place. you know it's crazy, which is nice but now just to pay rent we're paying about $100 a square foot. you know we need to bring in commerce just to pay for it all. very expensive, very wealthy area. so our clients can afford to buy the best. you know they drive the best they wear the best clothes you know why wouldn't you want to put the best that you can into your body on your dinner plate everyday?

c-so this is a little off topic but something that i have just been reading about and i am a little taken back by it, but have you heard about lab grown meat. they are somehow taking cells off of animals and harvesting them into meat products. i dont know if this is ever going to have it is something that scientist have tried with some success and it costs a lot of money to even test this so i am not sure if it would ever become mainstream, but do you think this is something that you would market?

a-probably. i could. i mean it's probably a long ways off. but i mean they have been talking about organ farming harvesting animal organs for stem cells and they're still kinda. i haven't seen any huge advances yet so i think once thats if that starts to take off then growing muscles i think could be a bi-product of any kind of advancements that are made in that realm. but i think first and foremost people will probably care more about specifically organs and trying to if my kidney fails its better for me if i can use it to replace a kidney from my own body. i mean from my own cells plus there could be rejection and stuff like that so that'll be first and foremost. and i think once we perfect it you know growing other parts you know probably you know grow a whole hand for a human why couldn't you grow a leg of beef as well. but we're a long way from something like that it is expensive now so only the people with lots of money can full around with stuff like that. i may see it one day and then you know i'll try anything once. you know if you cook it right and it tastes good we'll see. you know i can't say no right now cuz i dont know know what it requires and what kind of impact it will have it may be necessary if we get to a place in the world where we are so overpopulated and that's the only way you can produce enough beef to feed the masses

c-i guess i never thought of it like that. and so, people that don't eat meat, like vegetarians or vegans do you think that that's odd that somebody wouldn't eat meat or do you think that it is what it is...

a-um, no. you know there are so many different people in the world everybody's got their own little things that they prefer but i mean the people that come in here for lunch everyday because we serve burgers we sell a veggie burger too. you know we sell quite a bit of em. and same thing with the deli. we sell quite a bit of vegetarian sandwiches you know i don't think they have a problem coming in here and seeing the beef its your choice. you know as long as your not gonna be out here and protest the fact that we sell beef here i don't really care. you know it's not my thing i love meat ive been eating meat and im a firm believer that protein and all of those thi you know um genetically-whats the word im looking for? those uh, well protein you know for instance is necessary for you-for human growth and development. you know im a firm believer in you know ive got to have my glass of milk a day. if i didn't have milk you know i dont think i would be as big and strong as i am to this day. but everybody has a choice you know im a firm believer in its your body do whatever makes you whatever you choose. its the ones that decides to make a point out of us. protest, if they ever did, that's what i have a problem with. as long as, as long as your not doing anything wrong not breaking any laws not hurting anybody you shouldn't, you shouldn't you shouldn't bother me. i won't bother you you won't bother me.

c- so this is just a little different but, going back to the meat part of it, if meat doesn't sell or if something is somehow recalled because of a salmonella outbreak or something like that, what happens to the meat that just doesn't get sold.

a-well, our um our operation is truly unique and i think one of the main reasons why we're successful is that we got very little waste. and you cannot be successful you cannot make your business work if you have a lot of waste. there has to be an outlet for everything. and if it doesn't sell you gotta have you gotta do something with it. cuz that's money that you've invested in a product you can't just you might as well just throw the money down the drain. in our case we're good because we get raw products whether its vegetables, seafood, meat here we've got an outlet for pretty much everything. and i mean pretty much everything down to using the bones to make stock. you know we produce veal stock we produce pork stock we make a chicken stock we make fish stock we make a sauces, dinners. we take if we don't sell a lot of veal shanks what we do is we accumulate them in a freezer bring em over to the kitchen we'll cook em and we'll sell em as a frozen dinner entree with rice and vegetables in the frozen section at the deli. we'll have chicken parm uh everything from beef. we've got beef stew we've got beef stroganoff we've got all these dishes that we can use all these different cuts of beef for then all we have to do then is cook em, package em, and sell em. and you know if you sell em from the freezer they have an indefinite shelf life. you know once they're in there. um we're actually going to be expanding onto retail freezers maybe even grocery stores as well. our own frozen dinners made with our own ingredients. maybe in the next year or two hopefully that could take off. we've got the name already its already trademarked we own the name spring valley. so any food waters juices or alcohol we own the rights to. so its were just now starting with a new we got all the graphics done and we're selling em slowly out of out the deli, but i don't see why we couldn't sell em anywhere else.

c- yeah just knowing the location if they did make it into other grocery stores or in the area or downtown do you think that would make people-is there going to be anything that says this is part of wagshals?

a-what my dad wants to do is using the name spring valley right now and basically its going it has our wagshals logo on it at the bottom you know made by wagshals, washington, dc. and as the years progress what he what is plan is is to slowly make that wagshals logo non-existant. so that it's just spring valley foods. and then that in itself will be the name but you know i think wagshals has a little bit stronger connotation you know that name a little bit better than spring valley right now so you know.

c-and i just have two little questions there kind of just more like personal i guess for you. what is you favorite meat or favorite meat meal?

a-i would say favorite dish.

c-favorite dish is fine.

a-would be a german dish that my grandmother and dad makes all the time called roladen. r-o-l- i think its rol or roul-a-d-e-n. basically what it is is thin strips of top round london broil which you cook slowly over a long period of time it's stuffed with pickles and onion garlic and you make a nice big gravy with it as well. served with red cabbage and you could have dumplings or anything else everytime i go to see my grandmother she always makes it for me so its my dads favorite and its my favorite too.

c-do you have meat for every meal? like do you have it for breakfast, lunch...or is it?

a-uh, no i mean im a firm believer in everything in moderation including moderation. um so i know that if i just eat meat all the time its probably not the best for me

c-laugh

a-um my grandfather he i think hes had about 5 heart, heart attacks

c- o my.

a-uh but hes still kickin. but hes had to cut back you know he was one that grew up every breakfast use to have bacon and eggs everyday. or waffles and i have cuz im a diabetic. i kinda have to curtail so i dont i only have diet sodas and i have to watch my carbohydrates intake as well. um knowing i do have diabetics are more prone to a lot of health problems later in life you know can't exactly just treat my whole body as a playground right now. then ill deal with the rest of stuff later. theres serious consequences. you know take care of yourself from the beginning. so you know ill have a chicken caesar salad i try to eat my greens for every meal as well. balanced meals are important.

c-and then lastly what's your favorite color.

a-color?

c-yeah

a-i say red. ive had a few red cars in the years.

c-that's my favorite color.

a-yeah. i think my moms always said that red looks the best on me. so, i would have to say red.

c-meats red.

a-yeah, only when its raw tho.

c-only when its raw.

both laugh.

c-ok so that was all. so thank you.

a-yeah, no problem. if you have any other questions just shoot me an email.