It’s no secret that we’re big fans of Porter Road Butcher here at the Scene. Since Chris Carter and James Peisker first started cutting meat for retail in East Nashville in December 2011, Porter Road has appeared on this site and in the pages of the Scene many times, including as a perennial Best of Nashville winner and as the subject of cover stories, podcasts and photo essays.
The fact that Porter Road strives to do things the right way has earned the respect of customers and food writers who appreciate their dedication to knowing the farmers who raise their products and the conditions that the animals experience during their lives (and deaths), and their commitment to whole-animal butchery and maximizing the utilization of what they process. The fact that Carter and Peisker purchased a former deer-processing facility in Princeton, Ky., and converted it to an artisan butchering facility is a remarkable development for a county where the number of residents living below the poverty line exceeds national averages.
Taking a look at the Nashville-based butcher empire, 10 years in
This is why it was disappointing to discover on Monday, March 17, that Porter Road Butcher had filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection in the Middle District of Tennessee. According to the filing, Porter Road currently has liabilities in the (wide) range of $1 million to $10 million against assets between $500,000 and $1 million. The debts are certainly in the higher half of that range since the filing does explicitly list their top two debtors totaling more than $5 million.
However, it’s important to note that this doesn’t mean that the doors are shuttered and deliveries have stopped. Customers can still place orders on Porter Road’s website, and processing employees and ranchers are still hard at work. In fact, Carter and Peisker made the decision to file a particular type of Chapter 11 under Subchapter V, a relatively new provision that streamlines the reorganization process for small businesses with the hope of returning to normal business more efficiently. I spoke with Carter, who shared that he and Peisker chose this particular path to help protect current shareholders and investors and their positions while still maintaining operations.
Over the past few years, Porter Road has markedly changed its business model, taking on outside investment to expand operations with the goal of convincing retail and commercial consumers that there's a value in paying a little extra for responsibly raised and processed meat.
In former Scene editor Steve Cavendish’s extensively reported cover story from 2021, Porter Road board member Bill Rupp explained:
“We talk about the dream being, ‘Wouldn’t it be cool to take this business to be 1 percent of the annual beef harvest in the U.S.?’ And today that’s probably round numbers — 26 million cattle get harvested a year in the U.S. So 1 percent of that’s 260,000 head, which is a long ways from where they’re at today. But if you think about that, if you’re talking about 1 percent of the supply, you’re really talking about 1 percent of the demand too. I think there’s a trend among consumers today where they want to understand more and more where their meat came from. They want to make sure that the supply chain is transparent.”
In our recent phone call, Carter acknowledged that they literally had chosen a tough row to hoe. “We work with difficult farming processes," he says. "James and I could have done things differently and made a lot more money. But why would I want to run a business that I wouldn’t want to buy from?”
For Porter Road Butcher's meat men and their brand-new Porter Road Meat Co., doing things the right way now means owning the entire process
Carter and Peisker have had to split their time managing the processing plant and online operations while also responding to pressure from their lenders. The current state of economic uncertainty definitely hasn’t made those jobs any easier, but the duo remains resolute. “We absolutely plan to stay in business,” Carter vows. “We’re putting together a performance proposal for full payment and want to reorganize to be better and stronger.”
Also of note, Carter shares that as soon as the Chapter 11 notice was filed, he stopped drawing funds from a recent crowdsourcing campaign that has to date raised more than $1 million from friends and customers. Just as Carter and Peisker are dedicated to treating animals humanely, they are striving to treat their investors responsibly. Their ultimate goal continues to be to claim just 1 percent of the $315 billion U.S. meat industry from customers who also believe in doing the right thing.
Here’s hoping that Carter, Peisker and their whole team will be able to continue on their journey.
