Restaurateurs to manage Main Street Meats in Chattanooga

photo Main Street Meats partner's Jim Johnson, left, Dan Key and Tom Montague, talk about their products and suppliers in the Southside store lobby in this 2013 photo.

Main Street Meats will celebrate its one-year anniversary on Saturday with a new team of two running the show.

Erik and Amanda Niel, co-owners of Easy Bistro & Bar in Chattanooga, started handling operations at the Southside butcher shop this month.

The move is meant to expand Main Street Meats' sales of locally sourced meats to nearby restaurants. The Niels also plan to offer more prepared foods and add seating to the 217 E. Main St. location.

As the shop became more popular in recent months, customers often asked why it didn't have more room for lunch crowds, offer dinner or cater, said Jim Johnson, who founded the shop with Tom Montague and Dan Key.

"We decided that's what we needed to do, but we needed to bring in someone with the background and experience to pull that off," said Johnson, who owns Cloudcrest Farm in Walker County, Ga. "We don't have the restaurant industry background to be able to do an expansion like this."

Johnson had sold meat to Easy Bistro for years. He knew the Niels were committed to the same philosophy as the Main Street Meats' founders.

"They were really sold on locally grown meats as being superior and created really amazing dishes with them" at their restaurant, Johnson said. The couple still owns Easy Bistro & Bar.

Milton White, the shop's head butcher and charcuterie expert, also played a hand in bringing the Niels on board. In fact Erik Niel is so rapt over charcuterie -- the store sells more than a dozen kinds -- he wants to awaken a public appetite for the preserved meats.

The store draws about 30 percent of its revenue from lunch crowds, Niel said. Seventy percent comes from sales to customers at its meat and refrigeration cases, along with wholesale meat sales to local restaurants, he said. Main Street Meats sells to Chattanooga restaurants such as Alleia, St. John's, 212 Market and Flying Squirrel.

Main Street Meats offers beef, pork, lamb, chicken, turkey, broths, lard and charcuterie -- all from Tennessee's local farms. The charcuterie program explores distinctive local flavors, utilizing sausage, bacon, terrines, pates, salami and prosciutto, shop literature shows. They are crafted, salted, cured or hung to dry, and then aged to reach a certain texture and flavor.

Contact staff writer Mitra Malek at mmalek@timesfree press.com or 423-757-6406.

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