Owner of Legendary Florence Prime Meat Market Is Ready to Close Up Shop | Eater NY

"A neighborhood butcher shop with a city-wide following that first opened in 1936, Florence Prime Meat Market has occupied the same narrow sliver of storefront at 5 Jones Street (between West Fourth and Bleecker) for more than 86 years; owner Benny Pizzuco, who bought the business in 1995, will let the lease expire and likely close after the business day on Saturday, March 26, though he has offered to sell the business to his employees. Much of the equipment—meat hooks, counters, and enameled cast-iron panels—dates to when the shop opened, the sawdust on the floor is the shop’s longtime practice, and Pizzuco says he’ll leave the original equipment in place in hopes someone else does something food-related there. The store never bothered to get a website, and declining retail meat sales long before COVID, combined with the pandemic (some longtime customers died or moved away), left Saturday family orders replaced by single walk-ins buying a couple of chicken breasts, a shift Pizzuco says helped prompt the decision. Inside, classical music plays on a radio, framed family photos hang on the wall, customers linger on the wood bench while veteran cutters like Aristeo Quiñonez and Emilio Aguila trim cuts and remove silverskin with surgical precision and Bobby Mastronicola slices slab bacon beneath a faded Mona Lisa poster; Maria Alava, who started working there in 1986, often took phone orders. The shop always felt more like a neighborhood bookshop than a new‑generation butcher—where you went for advice, exact cuts, or to try the Newport steak, a cut claimed to be invented there—and some employees will move to the wholesale business Pizzuco will continue to operate out of Huntington, Long Island, while others face finding a new butcher; as Alava said, “We are at peace.”" - Oliver Strand