Jim Kurfurst was in high school when he took his first butcher shop job in 1961. This year, he’s celebrating his 40th anniversary as owner of Vancouver-based Butcher Boys.
“The knowledge level of the employee was a lot greater years ago than it is now,” Kurfurst said of the 1960s and ’70s.
Many of today’s grocery store meat cutters work with pre-cut meats and receive a year of training, he said. In years past, butcher shops put cutters through four years of training, as Kurfurst has done with about 20 apprentices.
“When they work here, they get the skills they used to get a long time ago,” Kurfurst said.
Kurfurst opened Butcher Boys in 1969 with Jim Wyzard, a co-owner until 1977. Kurfurst now owns the business with his wife, Barbara, and they employ a staff of 10, including seven full-timers. Their son, Peter, plans to become a partial owner.
Kurfurst saw little change in the meat industry in the 1960s and ’70s. But meat prices spiked in the 1980s, Kurfurst said, and low-priced box stores gained popularity.
While the competition closed other butcher shops, Kurfurst said he expanded services in 1987 with a smokehouse and sausage-making equipment.
“I decided everything we were going to do was going to be made here,” he said. “We filled a niche the grocery stores couldn’t fill.”
Growth was steady from 2000 to 2006, but business has slowed since the end of 2007. The snow of December 2008 led to a 15 percent drop in annual sales. Kurfurst declined to give further details on the company’s revenue.
But the recession’s silver lining, Kurfurst said, is that consumers are cooking at home more.
“I have people come in asking me how to make sausage products, and I’ll spend 20 minutes with them,” he said.
This year, he’s looking to expand the business, but if loans don’t come through for expansion, Kurfurst has plans to forge ahead with business as usual.
“We’ve gone through recessions, huge inflation swings,” he said. “I know how I survived then and I know how I’ll survive now.”
Butcher Boys is at 2615 E. Fourth Plain Blvd. in Vancouver. Kurfurst can be reached at 360-693-6241.
Charity Thompson can be reached at cthompson@vbjusa.com.
