Editor’s note: the hours of operation printed online for Victor’s Meat Market were incorrect. The correct hours are below.
It wasn’t that long ago that American families counted on local butcher shops to provide them with quality, affordable meat.
But over the past half century, most of those shops have closed. Many families now rely on supermarkets and wholesale markets like Costco and BJ’s for their beef.
Victor Cruz has seen this transformation happen from the provider side. First as a worker in a meat processing plant, then for many years as a supermarket butcher.
Now he is a part of what he will hope is a renaissance for the neighborhood butcher shop. Recently retired from his job with Stop and Shop, Cruz has opened Victor’s Meat Market on Klockner Road in Hamilton with his son, Alex.
Cruz butchers and preps the meat right on premises. Cuts of Certified Angus ribeye, filet and strip steak look tasty in refrigerated cases out front. There’s also oxtail, short rib, skirt steak and even impressive slabs of tomahawk steak on display.
Beef is the main attraction, but Victor’s has more: pork chops and spare ribs, pork patties, sausage, turkey thighs, and marinated and unmarinated chicken wings.
Then there’s the deli case, with salads, cold cuts and cheese. You can buy by the pound or on a hoagie made to order.
There is more in the fridge in back, including prime cuts like porterhouse and brisket. And Victor’s takes custom orders as well.
Cruz recalls a customer who called to order $150 worth of calves liver. “I’m like, OK, I’ll get it for you. Whatever you want!” Cruz says.
Customers can order stuffed chicken breast, stuffed pork chops, French-cut pork chops and meatballs. Cruz has a special recipe for pernil, a Puerto Rican pork shoulder, that he prepares on request.
Like any good butcher shop, Victor’s can provide not only the meat, but also the expertise in how to prepare it. Just ask them how to make the pernil, pork chops, a standing rib roast or anything else in the store.
“If you tell people how to cook it good, they do it, and then they come back and want to get more,” Cruz says.
* * *
In 1980, Victor Cruz was living in Jersey City, fresh out of high school and in need of a job.
A local meat-processing plant was hiring a butcher’s apprentice at $9.50 an hour when minimum wage was closer to $4. “Nobody really wanted the job I guess,” he says. “It’s cold in there, nobody wanted to be in a refrigerated building all day. So I took it.”
Slaughtered cows came in from the Midwest each day smf were hung in the plant for butchering. “We’d take it, cut it in half, and butchers would butcher it up into ribeye and whatever, distribute the meat to ballparks, supermarkets, everywhere. This was a big meat plant.”
He turned out to be a natural. The apprenticeship program at the plant was for five years, but Cruz says he completed it in two. Soon after, he was made the plant supervisor.
“I was bilingual, and all the workers were from Central and South America,” he says. “Thirty men working under me. It started from there and I loved it. They closed down 10 years later.”
He worked as a butcher for A&P for seven years before moving on to Stop and Shop, where he spent 25 years. Though his office was in Franklin Park, he spent much of the time roving from Stop and Shop to Stop and Shop, working at whichever store they needed him.
“I was a traveling butcher. I’d travel with my knives, my tools,” he says. “Do a job and get out.”
He made the decision to open his own shop years ago, after Stop and Shop corporate decided to buy fully prepackaged meat to sell. “I’m like, ‘What am I going to do when they buy me out?’” he says.
He got in touch with a real estate agent who showed him the building at 527 Klockner Road. “This place was empty, just four walls. I bought it, got the equipment, permits, permits, permits and we’re here,” Cruz says.
Among his equipment is a custom machine that makes ground meat patties. He keeps that one close to the cases because people like to watch it in action as it shoots out formed patties. “People say, ‘I never saw anything like that,’” he says.
He says business has been steady since opening in April. “People said, ‘Oh my God, a butcher, finally,’ so everybody’s happy,” he says.
Son Alex, a 2015 graduate of Hamilton High West, lives on the second floor. Though not formally trained as a butcher, he does help out on that end of the business when needed, as when Victor was hospitalized earlier in the year. “I had to hold the fort down until he got back on his feet,” Alex says.
Day to day, Alex handles finances, accounting, inventory management and other back-end aspects of the business. He works a couple of other jobs in addition to his job at Victor’s: at one job he works with patience who are in substance-abuse recovery, and in another he is a developer of a food-delivery app called Beach Grub.
Alex’s sister, Vanessa, is also involved in the business, helping on the social media side.
Victor says he is also committed to continuing the butchering tradition by hiring apprentices to work with him like Lou Aguilera, an employee who has been with the shop for a few months.
“There’s no butcher shops around. Other places, they don’t teach you everything. I learned from the bottom up,” he says. “Whoever learns from me, I will teach them the best.”
Victor’s Meat Market, 527 Klockner Road, Hamilton. (609) 838-1469. Open Tuesday through Saturday, 10 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. and Sunday 10 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. Order in person, by phone or via Facebook message.
Victor and Alex Cruz in Victor’s Meat Market, the father-son butcher shop and deli that they own and operate on Klockner Road in Hamilton. (Photo by Joe Emanski.),
