Belly of the Beast
Name of Your business
Your name and position
What inspired you to start your business? How did your business get started?
We wanted to work together on a day-to-day basis doing something we both loved and being involved with the community. Opening an eatery was a natural fit to make all of these wonderful things happen.
Belly of the Beast was eight years in the making before we opened. It went through many different concept variations and we could not be happier to have landed on forming an eatery featuring whole-animal butchery and produce sourced from local farms we’ve visited and are using best practices in raising their crops and animals.
Tell us a little bit about your business.
In making everything from scratch and using whole-animals, our menu rotates more regularly than your everyday eatery. When we sell out of bacon or pastrami or pulled pork or chicken, it means that we won’t have those dishes back up and running until we have ordered the animals and then butchered them and cured and smoked the meat. And with chicken, this is a seasonal animal in New England only being freshly available from mid-July to mid-November. People seem to understand the seasonality of produce (sweet potatoes: winter; tomatoes: late summer) more than animals, but almost all of the food we eat has some sort of season to it.
What is your favorite thing to do in your business?
If nothing else, what is the one piece of information you want someone to know about your business?
What is the one piece of business advice you would like to share?
Continually ask questions of other business owners and share in your own experiences with others. Those conversations are the most helpful to you in starting, building, and growing your business while also building a stronger community – one that will raise all businesses alike.