Rumors Confirmed: Fleishers, Butcher In Park Slope, Closes For Good

PARK SLOPE, BROOKLYN — A craft butcher shop recently back on the Park Slope market after a Black Lives Matter dispute, announced its permanent closure this week, confirming suspicions that the shop was kaput.

"After 19 years of business, Fleishers Craft Butchery has made the difficult decision to permanently close its doors," the shop wrote on its website Wednesday.

Days of empty shelves and a "permanently closed" listing at the butcher's Park Slope outpost spurred neighborhood speculation earlier this week that the shop was dead meat, Patch reported.

"We are grateful to have been able to give you the best quality and healthiest meat possible during that time," Fleishers wrote of its nearly two-decade-long run. "We appreciate your support."

The butcher did not respond to Patch's repeated requests for comment.

Fleishers, which started upstate in the early aughts amid a new guard of "rock star" whole-animal butchers (per The New York Times), expanded into New York City and its surrounding suburbs during the 2010s with great anticipation — especially in Park Slope.

The sustainable butchery empire, once the inspiration for books and to-be meat experts, started to experience financial difficulties after the expansion though, and turned to Robert Rosania, a wealthy real estate mogul, for financial backing.

Rosania reportedly sought company changes (wanting to "sell meat to rich people," as one former employee put it to Grub Street), which alienated employees.

Divisions worsened last year, when Rosania reportedly directed the butcher shop's CEO, John Adams, to remove signs supporting Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ movements, prompting an employee walkout.

Fleishers' four outposts — one in Park Slope and on the Upper East Side each plus two in Connecticut — subsequently shuttered, in what was said at the time to be a temporary closure.

About eight months later, in March, the shop's owners reopened the Park Slope outpost, marking Fleishers' return to the region, the company said at the time.

As for what's next, Adams told Grub Street that he is negotiating with suppliers and landlords and hopes to "close the business gracefully."

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