Primal Supply Meats to Close All Retail Locations on Saturday
Owner Heather Marold Thomason insists the closures are temporary but cannot offer a potential reopening date.
The Primal Supply Meats in Brewerytown (photo via Google Maps)
Update 9/14/21: Primal Supply Meats owner Heather Thomason has announced that the Brewerytown location will reopen on Thursday, September 16th, while the Fishtown location will remain permanently closed. She added that she plans for the South Philadelphia location to re-open.
Primal Supply Meats is easily the most talked about, written about and well-respected Philadelphia butcher shop in recent memory. Founded in 2016, the company has supplied top-end sustainable meats to some of the city’s best chefs. But now Foobooz has learned that all Primal Supply Meats shops are closing this Saturday, August 14th.
On Thursday, owner Heather Marold Thomason confirmed the closings to Foobooz, insisting that the closures are only temporary. But when we asked her for reopening dates, she was unable to provide any.
“We are focused on responsibly winding down current operations to allow for necessary time to evaluate and adapt our business model to the ongoing pandemic,” Thomason explains. “While we do not yet have definitive dates for re-opening the retail locations at this moment, the closures are temporary.”
Thomason says that she’s been transparent with her staff about the closings. Unfortunately for her staff, many will find themselves unemployed during the closures.
“A small team will support web store operations during the break,” she told us. “However, in order to wind down to minimal operations that will allow for this focused reset, I have made the difficult decision to furlough a portion of our staff.”
Thomason says that because Primal Supply Meats is a small business, it is not a “financial reality” for her to offer her employees paid leave. So they’ll need to navigate the Pennsylvania unemployment system during the closures, which hopefully, for all involved, won’t be long.
The closings affect all three Primal Supply Meats locations: the company’s headquarters in Brewerytown, the South Philly location on Passyunk Avenue and the pop-up shop on Frankford Avenue in Fishtown.
