NYC’s oldest butcher shop teeters on bankruptcy, pleads for help
Nestled among the high-end home-goods stores and boutiques that line Cobble Hill’s main retail corridor, one gourmet grocer offers not just premium cuts of meat — but also a time capsule into another era in Brooklyn, one where it was not unique to know the butcher by name.
But, possibly, that’s not for too much longer.
Staubitz Market has been slinging steaks from its 222 Court St. storefront since 1917, making it the borough’s oldest butcher shop. But a series of international trends and personal problems have recently brought on a slate of financial woes that its owner fears may be a death knell for the beloved local business.
“With the decreasing income revenue of the store, business affairs in a mess, and the decrepit state of the building; the accumulated expenses have now reached a critical point. Staubitz Market is at risk of bankruptcy and complete failure,” John McFadden Jr., 56, wrote in a GoFundMe he launched this month to raise $150,000 in funds for the store, which he inherited after his 87-year-old father passed away in November.
(His father, John McFadden Sr., bought the business and its building from Staubitz’s second owner in 1967 and worked the shop until his last, moving to administrative tasks after a bad fall left him wheelchair-ridden.)
The current financial reckoning, McFadden explained to The Post, is due to a combination of food price inflation, losing customers to the internet, corporate retailers and vegetarianism. They’re the classic challenges that have made running an independent business in New York City a challenge only the impassioned or wealthy ever successfully maintain. Among the other issues at hand, the city served McFadden with an emergency decree to repair the historically designated building’s facade, a fix which will cost him $125,000 to make.
“It’s a lotta pork chops you gotta cut to make $125,000,” McFadden told The Post.
Failure to fix the facade, he added, puts him at risk of being heavily fined and having the building condemned.
“Other places would just be like, ‘okay, we’re done,’” said McFadden, who grew up working at the shop and called the fundraising campaign a “do or die”-level situation.
Patrons were quick to show their support for the family-owned meat merchant that has devotedly served them for the past 60 years. The GoFundMe has so far accrued about $20,000, and has drummed up more business for the scaffolding-entombed butcher.
“To me, walking into Staubitz is walking into a tradition of beautifully displayed meats and knowledgeable butchers who actually know you and listen to what it is you want,” Ken Rush, 74, who has been a loyal customer since moving to the neighborhood in 1972, told The Post.
In all of Rush’s decades shopping there, he said, neither the service nor scenery have changed much, although there’s no longer sawdust on the floor.
(That tradition stopped some 15 years ago, when a new wood floor was installed that the McFaddens found became slippery when sawdusted.)
“Going to Staubitz feels like a trip back in time to the origins of the neighborhood,” said Debbie Miesenzahl, 54, a customer of 12 years.
“I don’t want to go to Trader Joe’s or some other place to buy meat,” said Eric Hansen, who shops at the store every day — and is friends with every butcher and lives around the corner. “This is a home away from home for me.”
McFadden hopes their love can save his shop so he can keep it going, as his father did before him.
“I’m still healthy and strong. I’d love to keep it going, continue serving the community as we’ve done for nearly 60 years,” he said. “I’m honored and grateful to have the opportunity to do what I do. We offer a great product and I know when people take it home, they’re gonna love it, they’re gonna come back, they’re gonna say, John, I just want to tell you that we had family over and that was the best steak and it was beautiful.”
