Ever wonder if a difference exists between beef sold at your local grocer or supermarket chain and that sold from a butcher shop or meat store? Certainly, you reason, differences must exist or butcher shops could not exist when having to compete against the huge chains.

Well, guess what? You hit the nail right on the head. Big differences really do exist between your friendly neighborhood meat store and the sell-everything supermarkets so numerous in today’s society. Read on to find out what those differences are. …

A meat store depends on a loyal customer following to succeed in business. Without repeat buyers, your butcher will soon go belly up. So how does he/she ensure a “following”? By giving customers the finest in quality meats. This may not always mean the lowest price, so if that’s what you’re looking for, you’d do well to stick to the big chains.

Your Butcher – or most of them, anyway (it always pays to ask) – puts only USDA-graded meat in his meat store. On the other hand, grocery stores can and do stock meat imported from such places as Brazil, Chile, New Zealand, and other countries where government grading and inspection systems do not meet the same standards as those of the United States.

Also, it’s a safe bet that the American meat that is sold in your local supermarket comes from one of the four biggest cattle processors in the country – IBP, Excel, Montfort, and Farmland National – that control around 80% of the beef market. The super-fast processing these companies do to their meat eliminates the dry-aging process of hanging meat for a week to 14 days in a cooler to reach optimum tenderness and flavor.

Your neighborhood meat store, however, takes these extra steps to provide the best beef available, even if it means taking longer. The extra money you pay to your meat store compensates only fractionally for the amount of time taken to provide this quality-making process.

So the next time you’re trying to decide whether or not to buy from a meat store or go to a grocery chain store, stop and think. Do you want quality, or do you want low price? As always, it’s only up to you.