How a Butcher Shop Outshone Gucci with Its Design

‘Nothing prepared me for the impression I encountered’, ‘Fascinating’, ‘I didn’t expect to be so impressed’, ‘Wow’ – this is just a small part of the impressions about a store like no other, which also includes the autograph of the world’s most famous TV host Oprah Winfrey, left on the wall, and a refrigerator donated by loyal customer Russell Crowe. All of them, as well as the international design judging panel, were most astonished by the fact that one, admittedly not quite ordinary butcher shop, can overshadow the lavishly equipped luxury fashion boutiques signed by Louis Vuitton, Kenneth Cole, Kevin Kline, Bulgari, Gucci… In such competition at the Interior Design Award, Best of Year (BoY), held in 2010 in New York, the butcher shop Victor Churchill from Sydney won in the store design category.

Aesthetic and Delicious

Even before you enter the Victor Churchill butcher shop in Sydney, the oldest in Australia, which has been continuously operating at the same address since 1876, you will see displayed the finest cuts of meat available in Australia, and beyond, in the window, more precisely in a custom glass refrigerator. Most often, it is about several types of cuts of Wagyu beef, for which they are famous, or the most delicious sausages. And instead of leaving you indifferent, like any other butcher shop, if you have no intention of buying anything, here you will even continue to feast your eyes on the fascinating copper-glazed display refrigerators inside, where beef, veal, pork, goat, lamb legs and thighs, as well as rabbits, chickens, geese, and ducks rotate on a hook conveyor. The long rectangular space is vaulted with wooden beams, the walls are partially stripped to old stone layers or covered with wooden cladding, and the floor is covered with marble slabs. In a special room, glassed from floor to ceiling and equipped with a drying and aging device, the meat ages in optimal conditions of humidity and air purity. Iberico ham and Chorizo prosciutto stand next to the open counter, alongside the rare Dutch meat slicer Berkel and specially imported poultry slicers from the French company Labesse Giraudon. Here, blood sausage pairs well with foie de gras and looks equally tempting.

This unusual, completely open concept of the store and aesthetic solutions are the work of one of the most prestigious Australian design teams from Dreamtime Australia Design. However, this story would not be so fascinating if behind the premium design there was not the same business philosophy that has placed this butcher shop on the ‘must-see’ list in Sydney.

Driven by Meat

Behind the now-famous butcher shop Victor Churchill since 2008 are the names of Victor and Anthony Puharich, father and son, founders of the company Vic’s Premium Quality Meat, today the largest Australian supplier of premium meat. The Puharichs, originally from Croatia, are the fourth owners of the butcher shop in its 133 years of continuous operation under the name of the first butcher and owner Victor Churchill.

This fascinating success story begins in Croatia, from where Victor Puharich left in search of work in 1971 at the age of 20. Born into a butcher family for three generations, he joined his brother in Sydney working in meat dispatch and slaughterhouse. He got married at 22, soon becoming a father of three children. He decided that he would achieve something more in life and worked as a culinary assistant in a Kings Cross restaurant for over five years during the night. After 20 years of hard work for Andrews Meat, Victor opened his first own shop in 1996. In the meantime, he had already proven himself as an expert in all types of meat, processing and cutting methods, as a specialist in aging and processing meat, as a butcher always ready to give the best advice and share a joke with customers. At that time, many classic butchers in Australia closed their doors, mostly due to competition from large supermarkets.

However, Puharich did not let himself be discouraged. By then, he had personally met all the best farmers in Australia, those who raise Wagyu cattle or rare black Berkshire or Kurobuta pigs, and observed how they feed and raise livestock. That is why today he gladly advises his clients: ‘If you want to see if a butcher is trustworthy, ask him if he knows the origin of the meat, the method of raising, what the livestock ate, how the meat was aged. A quality butcher must know all that.’ And Victor knew that, unlike supermarkets, he could always deliver the freshest premium cut of meat. With that attitude, he began visiting the kitchens of the best Australian restaurants and hotels. Top chefs knew that Victor was right when he said, ‘The taste of meat is influenced not only by origin and quality but also by the way it is cut.’

Enthusiasm and Passion

Today, Vic’s Meat is the leading meat supplier for restaurants and hotels, with 80 percent of the market in eastern Australia and an annual revenue of 35 to 40 million dollars.

– A larger number of older butchers did not manage well at the end of the 90s, so they closed, and with supermarket meat, you could not feel too much difference between the lowest quality and premium meat. At one point, it happened that many customers and supermarket butchers knew nothing about meat. Therefore, I have always insisted in my butcher shop to help in the best selection, suggest cuts and preparation, give some advice, rather than just pushing products – says 63-year-old Victor Puharich today. And that his true enthusiasm and passion are not fake but contagious is evidenced by Darren O’Rourke, a young talented chef who now works as a butcher at Churchill because he realized, he says, that this is the key step in later culinary art. However, he is not the only culinary ace working at Victor Churchill. The most famous among the chefs, renowned for meat processing and French sausage recipes, is the Frenchman Romeo Baudouin.

Puharich was fortunate to find a partner in his 41-year-old son Anthony, whom he did not push towards his business, in this still-growing meat empire. Anthony joined only after graduating in finance and banking and working for a while as an investment fund analyst. With, therefore, a completely new perspective on things, at the end of the 90s, Anthony joined and took the already reputable business to a new level.

A Fashionable Event

Thanks to Anthony, the butcher business began to adopt a modern philosophy and approach. When top chefs became the majority of customers, Anthony insisted that the business be reduced to wholesale, so his father’s butcher shop was closed. They began building a top-notch warehouse, slaughterhouse, cutting room, and distribution center in the Sydney suburb of Mascot, also a state-of-the-art building, with the most sophisticated equipment. A similar one was recently opened in Melbourne.

As a successful modern businessman, Anthony has often been on the lists of most eligible bachelors until his heart was won by Australian Rebecca, with whom he now has three children. His name is always associated with a smile, whether he is behind a smartphone solving budgeting or ‘slicing’ a piece of meat for clients. He comments that when he approaches it this way, the difference between fun and work disappears. When asked how the opening of this unique butcher shop, now a must-visit address on the city’s attractions list, easily interchangeable with an art gallery, came about, Anthony replies: ‘The opening of the Churchill butcher shop in 2009 was a fashionable event that all newspapers wrote about.’ Anthony has, in fact, skillfully woven bones, blood, and meat into a story about top gastronomy, with a desirable lifestyle, ecology, and through strong connections, linked it all with the most popular chefs and fashionable audiences.