The Local Butcher Shop brings employee ownership to the table

we founded the local butcher shop in and the local butcher shop is really here to service our local community with meat that is good for you and good for the planet all of our farms and ranches are located within 150 miles of berkeley we knew that we wanted to support all of these ranchers who are doing amazing things and bring good sustainable meat to our community over time we've been able to build a really great crew who's responsible and really enjoys and loves what they do and has just as much respect in the product as we do by them becoming owners they also increase their professional experience by having the responsibility of being owners of making the decisions and of seeing out the reactions to those decisions and ultimately being much more in control of the end result it's going to be challenging it's going to give me a lot more responsibilities but tacking more responsibilities on to me and my life gives me purpose and like having purpose gives me a reason to get up every single day with the co-op being established i think it's going to be really great um you know incentive for people to to want to work at the budget shop and come to a place where we really do value our employees as they are and everything that they bring to the table it's going to be our business to run and there's a lot of weight there but it's also of course a lot of opportunity working here with air and monica and then going through the transition with project equity and then now going to being an owner of the business all of that is really just going to help me be able to navigate things in the future it is a huge shift for me coming from a more employee position into not just an ownership position as a worker owner but a more leadership oriented position as the general manager project equity has been amazing such a great partner i wouldn't i wouldn't even know where to begin without them just in terms of from the get-go with the analysis of whether we could even become a co-op if it was even a viable financial option all the way through to onboarding a transition team and getting them up to speed and then having the possibility of selling the business to the employees and keeping the legacy continuing on for as long as it possibly can without having to change any of the employee structure change over ranchers or farmers and continue to keep our community serviced with well-sourced meat it was like a no-brainer it ensures that there's some consistency and a future that the owners can be proud of and look back and say yeah i founded that and look where it is today it's still going and it still has all of our fingerprints all over it but it's also grown on in a life of its own [Music]