The return of the neighborhood butcher

Photography by Ben Rollins

In 2018, Sean and Emma Schacke were longtime veterans of the restaurant industry and wanted freedom. This freedom was to have their own butchery and bakery, to combine their respective skills, to put down roots in a place and to settle down. The couple found the right place in Kirkwood, on Hosea Williams Drive, a two-story brick building with an apartment at the top that made their morning commute a flight of stairs. But their ambition came up against the challenge of responsibly reviving a craft from a bygone era.

“Emma brought the pastry side, which is essential, but having a butcher shop today is a risk, because it is an older business,” explains Sean, the butcher. “We had to think about how we can be marketed to this older, nostalgic audience, but also to a younger audience. »

The couple opened Evergreen Butcher + Baker in September 2019, with this question in mind. Sean’s answer was sustainability for himself and his customers. “When you’re a butcher, you realize when you walk into a store that there’s only one steak hanging per cow,” says Sean. “So 12 hanging steaks represent 12 different animals.” Sean is a whole animal butcher who leaves no meat on the bones when working with pork, turkey or beef. It sources a number of animals each week from Georgia farms that produce grass-fed, antibiotic-free animals. During its opening week, Evergreen’s meat case, filled with steaks, bacon, smoked turkey and deli meats, sold out daily to people of all ages.

“Looking back, whole animal butchery was a no-brainer,” says Sean. “Today, people care more about where their food comes from, and that extends to meat. »

“And we can also offer them bread for their sandwiches,” adds Emma.

Photography by Ben Rollins

Evergreen’s success coincides with a resurgence in the butchery industry across the country. American butcher shops are no longer in decline, with research data showing growth in revenue and number of employees and businesses since 2019. Many are successfully offering meat with a side, via a connected restaurant , a retail market or, as in Evergreen’s case, a bakery. In Atlanta, Evergreen is one of several innovative butcher shops opening in recent years. Buckhead Butcher Shop, specializing in gourmet cuts, opened in 2020 and moved to a new, larger location in 2023 to host events and cooking classes. In January, Nick Leahy, formerly of Nick’s Westside, opened Vice Kitchen in Johns Creek as a butcher shop and market.

Sean and Emma’s journey began 12 years ago at One Eared Stag, the Inman Park restaurant on Edgewood Avenue that closed in 2021, where Sean worked as a chef and Emma as a pastry chef. After moving together to Chicago, Sean received formal training as a butcher at Publican Quality Meats and Emma added baking to her repertoire at Pleasant House Bakery. The couple later emigrated to Portland, Maine, where Emma worked in a bakery and Sean in a small butcher shop. Evergreen Butcher + Baker as a next step made perfect sense.

“We wanted to return to Atlanta while still focusing on our craft together,” says Emma. “Throughout our career, tradition has been important to us, which is why we have also chosen staples for our menu rather than reinventing the wheel. »

Evergreen’s offerings take full advantage of its unique marriage. Daily lunch specials include sandwiches made with Sean’s deli cuts and Emma’s sourdough, rye or multigrain bread. The pastry box is filled with chocolate croissants and kouign-amanns, but also tasty sausage rolls and ham and cheese croissants. The setup also reflects the couple’s dining experience. In the morning, Emma and Sean fill the boxes with pastry and meat in what they call “abbondanza”, which means “abundance” in Italian, so that you have as many options as possible and don’t feel bad to take the last cookie. You can also see all the happenings in the kitchen behind the counter, which is what Emma hoped to have after her experience working in a bakery in Amsterdam. “It makes everything more accessible,” says Emma. “Customers can see everything we make and we can help them better. »

The pandemic thwarted some of their early success, with Emma and Sean only able to pay a few employees. The couple set up a table outside their door to take orders. The hardships of the times also forced Evergreen to evolve. When business was slow on Sundays, Sean and Emma came up with the idea of ​​using leftover beef to make burgers for lunch, with Emma making the sesame buns. They started by making 50 burgers, but the burgers became a smash hit, with lines out the door and down the block. Four years later, Emma and Sean make around 170 burgers every Sunday and still sell them out within an hour.

“We love how popular this product has become, but we see some people getting upset when we run out of it,” Sean says. “These are people who don’t typically shop with us, so they don’t understand that we’re not a burger restaurant.” Emma adds: “We use all the meat we have left for burgers, so when we’re out, we’re totally out.”

Photography by Ben Rollins

Emma and Sean don’t plan to add another location, but want to see how far Evergreen can expand. The couple recently purchased a small farm in Cleveland, Georgia, where they have a vegetable garden and orchard to source ingredients for sandwiches and salads. On their days off, they work on the farm, hoping to one day host pop-up dinners there. Three butchers now assist Sean daily, and Emma has hired six bakers, as well as her first assistant, to help ease the burden of the daily abbondanza.

But the couple still hasn’t given up on their daily routine. Emma wakes up every day at 3:30 a.m., makes a cup of coffee and starts cooking at 4:00 a.m. Sean joins Emma in the fray around 5:30 p.m. With the pieces prepared from the day before, he loads the case of meat. His current favorite products are cold meats, even better thanks to his new slicer; the meat is so fine that people ask if it’s boar’s head. Even though they have employees at the register, Emma and Sean turn to the counter when it opens at 7:00 a.m.

“I get really excited when I get to answer a family’s questions about which farms our animals come from and what they eat,” says Sean. “It’s an experience that I think people want and haven’t had in a long time.”

This article appears in our June 2024 issue.

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