An online butcher, de quessé?
Buying your meat online, rather than at the grocery store, may seem strange, but it is possible. Marc-André Jetté, chef and owner of the Hoogan et Beaufort restaurant, opened the online butcher shop Édouard et Léo during the pandemic, which promotes local producers working in a sustainable and eco-responsible way.
Quality meat, produced locally and delivered directly to your home, can you? In any case, this is the promise of the online butcher shop Édouard et Léo, launched by chef Marc-André Jetté (Hoogan and Beaufort). A beautiful pandemic challenge.
For years, chef Marc-André Jetté has been working with the same small local producers to supply his restaurant, Hoogan and Beaufort, with meat. The pandemic is coming and these producers can no longer sell all their meat due to the closure of restaurants. At the same time, several customers tell the chef of their difficulty in finding good local meat.
The idea is there, but it is only when friends of the neighboring chalet visit him with meat ordered online of rather average quality that Marc-André Jetté decides to start. His project: to create an online butcher shop that would encourage local producers by avoiding the intermediary of distribution chains.
Thus was born Édouard et Léo, named in tribute to the respective grandfathers of the chef and his partner Mathieu Provencher, producers and farmers who participated in shaping rural Quebec.
Short circuit and quality
The objective of the two partners and therefore to put local producers ahead by creating a direct link to consumers. The butcher receives the whole carcasses directly and processes the whole animal so that nothing is wasted. The meat is cut and aged on site.
Without imposing a list of criteria, the butcher favors Quebec breeders who work “responsibly in their breeding, without hormones or antibiotics”, specifies Vincent Leclerc, executive chef of Édouard et Léo.
“We don't have a specific charter indicating how we want to work, because we don't want to impose our standards on producers,” he adds. Our goal is to promote their work and their expertise.”
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< h3>Buying online
The online platform that serves as the butcher's interface is very simple. You choose a product category, a type of meat and the desired cut. Then, as in any online store, we add the product to the basket and proceed to payment.
It is possible to place an order up to three weeks in advance or to order before 11 a.m. to receive or pick up your meat the same day.
Point original, it is possible to buy “producer boxes” which encourage the consumption of the whole animal. There is a panoply of pieces that cannot be found in grocery stores or restaurants. On beef, for example, around fifty different cuts are possible.
The butcher also always offers to make arrangements with customers who want specific cuts.
A new habit
The whole process is very respectable, but are consumers really willing to buy meat from a photo on a website without being able to observe and touch it as one can in the grocery store?
According to Vincent Leclerc, it's just a matter of habit. “It is certain that at the beginning there is a time of adaptation for the customers since in the grocery store, you choose exactly the piece you want, he concedes. But we try to be very standard in what we send. Orders are packed the same morning for maximum freshness. We take our own photos and we sell what we see in the photo.”
And for those who prefer to go to the store, the butcher Édouard et Léo also has a storefront. in Ahuntsic. Last April, she took the place of the butcher shop Ça va barder.
The owners also plan, in the coming weeks, to open a small shop in their headquarters, in Hochelaga, and possibly sell ready meals in a small grocery store in Griffintown.
Despite this expansion, it does not want to become a big company, but rather keep this vision of promoting and promoting small local producers who do their job out of passion.
