WSTB

Major outfits like JP Morgan will probably only do Greensboro in the so-called triad, since they don’t operate in suburbs.

I counted 8 locations in the Raleigh area including 1 in Durham, 1 in Apex, 1 in Cary, 1 in Chapel Hill, and 1 in Garner. There are also 12 locations in the Charlotte area including 1 in Concord, 1 in Huntersville, 1 in Cornelius, 1 in Harrisburg, and 1 in Gastonia. They opened their first NC location in August 2019 in Chapel. The press release said they plan "up to 40 locations" in the state over the next 3 years, so it will be interesting to see when or if they put a location in the Winston Salem area. This press release was dated August 7, 2019 just before covid, so I'm sure their schedule has been altered somewhat.

The Butcher’s Block is closing its Winston-Salem IQ location

https://ibb.co/9g4W0Kq

Sadly this does not surprise me. Winston-Salem is not a town that can sustain such a retail establishment. 250,00+ folks with the mentality of
Walmart. Pathetic. Hence no airport or anything "international"

"

na.

I was thinking, a month or two ago, that I'm surprised this business survived. I expected it to close. There really isn't enough residential in the Innovation Quarter to support it. If they could make a serious effort to bring more residential to the IQ, I think they could support businesses like this. If the IQ could work with Reynolds and a developer to develop the sea of parking to the west of the railroad tracks, The Butcher's Block likely could've survived and maybe expanded. It's interesting that they do well in Lexington. Of course there is another local butcher (Smoke City) across from Hanes Park, not too far away. It could be a case of only enough of a market for one? I think this also shows the importance of having upper-end jobs (possibly what the poster above is talking about?). I thank the owners for giving it a try. I also want to pressure the Innovation Quarter to add more residential near their storefronts. There are opportunities to maybe add 1,500-2,000 more residents in this part of the Innovation Quarter. It would also allow the Innovation Quarter to expand during the long delays in building their medical, research, and classroom buildings.

Lazy hipster hours. They didn't even open until noon during the week. Not surprised it didn't last more than 18 months.
Besides, who goes to Patterson Ave. just to buy raw meat? Any produce stands or bakeries on that block? It's hardly the Brooklyn of my grandmother's day.
Her father's butcher shop opened at 8am.
"By noon," she would say, "half the day is over".
Besides, we have supermarkets now . . . just not Downtown.

Good spot for a burger or craft beer joint . . . since that's all people seem to want there anyway.

That location was ill suited for that type of specialty retail. The lack of convenient parking where a customer could pop in & out relatively easily was an issue. Couple that with the limited hours and it doesn’t set the business up for much success. The alleged “Wal-Mart mentality of the Camel City’s over 250,000 residents” played little if any role in this enterprise’s demise, IMO. Considering their original location is in Lexington

The founder of Trader Joe's once said that his target demographic was an unemployed professor. Educated and frugal. I never frequent Wal Mart, like to shop local, etc., but I'm also frugal and there better be a good reason for me to pay a premium for what accounts to a meal that I am cooking at home. On the other hand, my wife and I love Trader Joe's, Lidl, etc., because they offer good quality at a bargain. I suspect a good bit of Winston residents feel the same way. We are certainly not a young money town, and young money is going to typically be required to sustain high end butcher shops.

Does Lexington have a lot of “new money?”

I assume you intended to post this on the other thread about the butcher shop closing?

No, and Lexington also doesn't have many options for quality meat. Winston has another butcher shop in West End (Smoke City), Ogburn Station, Whole Foods, Fresh Market, Publix, etc. Then, you have people like me who think the quality of meat you can find at Lidl is perfectly fine for a burger or a steak. Perhaps I should have said that Winston may not have the demographics to support another butcher shop. Not only is our population less than Charlotte, Raleigh, etc., but our mean and median income is lower. Eventually, you are going to run out of a viable customer base for high end products when you have a relatively small population with a relatively low income (compared to other metro areas).

I love that entrepreneurs are willing to try these small-scale foodie shops. But the price points for specialty meats are astronomically higher than the factory-farmed stuff that the supermarkets sell, making this a hard business to scale. Competitors like Whole Foods also challenge them with meat of similar quality at lower prices.
I would love to see a good cheese shop in town but am guessing it would face the same headwinds.
I think bakeries have a sweet spot because the shelf-stabilized and half-baked “fresh” products in supermarkets are substantially different and lower quality.

The major factor at work here is location; the Butcher's Block isn't near any other grocery stores. There's a reason that there are five major grocery stores within a mile of each other in the Five Points area. If you don't find everything you're looking for in one store, you can go across the street or down the block. It's convenient and time-saving for the shopper. The European grocery-shopping model of going from the butcher shop to the fish market to the green grocer to the fruit stand to the bakery (often on foot) works because they are all located in close proximity to each other in dense urban centers.
I'm sorry that the Butcher's Block didn't make it, but I am not surprised.

Exactly how my grandmother did it in on Myrtle Ave. in the hipsterless Brooklyn of the 1940s - wearing a babushka and pulling a small metal shopping cart behind her.

Mine did the same thing, but in Queens. Maspeth to be more specific.