High-End UES Butcher Shuts Down For Good After BLM Sign Fiasco

UPPER EAST SIDE, NY — An upscale Upper East Side butcher shop has shut down permanently along with its entire company, months after a fiasco surrounding the removal of a Black Lives Matter sign from a store window, according to the company and news reports.

Fleishers Craft Butchery, on Third Avenue near East 76th Street, had already been closed temporarily since last summer's scandal, when the company's CEO removed both a Black Lives Matter and LGBTQ pride sign from the window of a Westport, Conn. store — reportedly at the behest of a customer and a wealthy investor.

That prompted employees to walk out in protest at four Fleishers locations, including the Upper East Side, Park Slope, and Greenwich, Conn., prompting the company to close all of its stores for months. (About half of the company's employees resigned after the walkout, Eater reported.)

This week, a message appeared on the Fleishers website, saying that the company has "made the difficult decision to permanently close its doors" after 19 years in business. Only the Park Slope location had reopened since last summer, but sparse shelves in recent weeks had led customers to suspect that its days were numbered, as Patch reported.

According to Grub Street, the sign debacle was hardly the only factor in the hip meat purveyors' downfall. The COVID-19 pandemic "damaged both sales and morale" at the company, with the Upper East Side location closing for a month after customer traffic "cratered completely" in 2020, the publication reported on Wednesday.

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

Rosania pushed the company to cater to wealthy customers — a tactic that alienated employees who wanted to focus on the core product, according to Grub Street.

The closure represents a steep fall for a company that had been labeled a "rock star butcher" by the New York Times in 2009, not long after its founding in Kingston, N.Y.

John Adams, Fleishers' CEO, told Grub Street that he is negotiating with suppliers and landlords and hopes to "close the business gracefully."

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