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“They’re coming to us because they know they’re going to get a great cut of meat, we’re local-sourcing a lot of stuff now and our clerks and our meat manager are knowledgeable about the meat that they’re selling,” Rob Hammann said.
A recently launched expansion will see the storefront grow by 1,500 square feet to 5,000 square feet by early March, he said.
“It’s going to primarily serve as a catering sales area consult for our potential clients,” Hammann said. “Our catering expediting (for off-site catering) will go there. We’re going to expand our kitchen to handle the extra volume.”
A new addition to the business last season was Grandpa Hammann’s BBQ Shack, a portable food trailer with a grill, fryer and smoker, one that is capable of being towed to events, but spent most of the 2016 season parked outside the business. When warmer weather arrives this year, that’s likely where the trailer will remain, Hammann said.
“We do more business off that parking lot than we do when we go out,” he said. “It’s an event trailer, it’s not a food truck. It’s not a one afternoon kind of deal.”
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Keeping the trailer on the lot allows customers to stop by during lunch hour and dine on freshly prepared barbecue cuisine, including smoked burgers and cured pepper bacon, under the shade of a tent, something he said “just adds to the whole barbecue experience.”
Long-time customers continue to make the drive from Mount Healthy and beyond to shop at Fairfield location because they value the quality of product they can receive, Rob Hammann said.
“You still have people that appreciate the good, old-fashioned quality and service of a family-owned, custom meat market,” Hammann said. “That says we’re doing something right after all these years, that these people want to support you.”
That support, Hammann said, gives the business and its 16 employees the energy to keep the business going and find new ways to keep it alive as it battles for market share with a competition that is “tremendous.”
“I’m not going to say I worry about who’s behind me but we certainly want to always find a way to keep the people interested in coming,” he said, noting the store’s planned Valentine’s Day and St. Patrick’s Day meal specials. “Loyalty, that’s what keeps us going and it’s generational now.”
Still, Hammann said he views other area butcher shops as allies.
“There’s enough business for all,” he said.
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