We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Nick Chase a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Nick , we’re so excited for our community to get to know you and learn from your journey and the wisdom you’ve acquired over time. Let’s kick things off with a discussion on self-confidence and self-esteem. How did you develop yours?
That’s easy. You just fake it until you can convince enough people that you know what your doing. Then try to learn some more and figure out if you actually know what you’re doing.
I was a chef before I became a butcher so I had an idea of what breaking beef is like, just not on the scale that I was going to do when the shop opened. But once you break one cow, all the others are the same, it’s just a matter of practice. I worked really hard to learn as fast as I could. Eventually, practice becomes expertise. then you just have to hope you haven’t been practicing wrong the whole time.
Let’s take a small detour – maybe you can share a bit about yourself before we dive back into some of the other questions we had for you?
I’m the owner of Friendly Nick’s Butcher in Fort Collins.
We are a whole animal retail butcher shop focused on bringing the best meats to northern Colorado. I opened the shop in the summer of 2018. We struggled along for the first year and a half until the COVID pandemic hit. There was a week where we closed and I wasn’t sure we’d ever open again. We did, amazingly, and the pandemic, or at least the economic affects of being an essential business during a time of fear and uncertainty, ended up being a boon for us. Everyone still had to eat and I was able to grow the shop to meet an increased demand. I was able to pivot our offerings to create more value for our customers and that allowed us to grow while many food service businesses struggled. It taught me a valuable lesson I still apply today; that my services need to bring value to my customers. So, despite being focused on the high end of the meat market in both quality an price we create ways for our customers to find value here.
We’re a whole animal butcher shop and there’s a lot of meat on a cow that’s not a fancy steak. My training as a chef allows me to use all of our trimmings to create products like deli meats, bacons, and sausages, and take home meals like shredded BBQ beef, pulled pork, barbacoa. Because we can use every scrap from the animal we can offer unique cuts that you don’t find in supermarkets and offer them at a price that brings value to my customers.
Now, with inflation’s devastating affect on food prices, I still focus on ways to keep the costs down for everyone. We started selling whole, half, and quarter beef and pork. It can save you anywhere from 10 – 15% vs buying each cut through our case. It also provides an amount of relief to know that you have hundreds of pounds of meat available to you no matter what prices do for the next year.
There is so much advice out there about all the different skills and qualities folks need to develop in order to succeed in today’s highly competitive environment and often it can feel overwhelming. So, if we had to break it down to just the three that matter most, which three skills or qualities would you focus on?
I think the most important quality that helped us succeed was my commitment to honest communication with my customers.
There’s a lot of misinformation out there about how beef is raised, what’s good for the cow, what’s good for the environment, and what’s good for the consumer. I wanted my shop to be a place where customers could talk with an educated butcher to answer questions in a way you don’t get at a supermarket. My social media approach is the same way. My primary goal on social media is to let people know that I exist. I’m not always trying to sell a certain product or even promote the shop. Sometimes I just tell funny make stories or make bad jokes. I wanted my customers to connect with the people who run the shop and reinforce that we’re not just nameless schmucks working an average retail job. We’re borderline professional people that truly enjoy working with food, talking about it, and helping other people find joy in cooking. I try to create an atmosphere similar to an old barber shop. You can come in an shoot the shit for a while, talk about what’s happening in your life (or at least in your kitchen) and you leave with a renewed sense of confidence, at least about what you’re cooking if not how you look. Being honest with my customers helps them relate to me, my employees, and my shop. It allows me to be a part of the community instead of another faceless corporation.
Alright so to wrap up, who deserves credit for helping you overcome challenges or build some of the essential skills you’ve needed?
I don’t think there’s a person I’ve worked with or friends I’ve had that haven’t contributed to the success of the shop. I gather ideas and inspiration from everywhere. I haven’t had any employee come through here that hasn’t contributed something that made the shop a little better.
I had one employee leave after 3 days because the reality of what we do was too macabre, and even they helped me to examine how we work to make sure our customers see us as approachable and comfortable.
Mainly, though, my wife and her endless support and patience. My parents for their seed money (and love, guidance, education, etc), and my sons for inspiring me to push myself.
Contact Info:
- Website:www.fnbutcher.com
- Instagram: @fnbutcher
- Facebook: @fnbutcher
