A specialty butcher shop with a wine bar and market is being built in Belmont.
Antonio Tillery, co-owner of The New York Butcher Shoppe of the Greater Charlotte Area, plans to open a fifth location of the store at the corner of Bryant Street and McLeod Avenue in Belmont. The other four locations are in Dillworth, Indian Land, Davidson and Fort Mill.
“It will be our fifth location in the Charlotte area, so we’re pretty excited to be there. It’s actually the only freestanding building in our portfolio,” Tillery said.
The New York Butcher Shoppe is a full-service butcher shop specializing in Certified Angus Beef products. The shop sells beef, pork, chicken, and even seafood, and makes its own sausage.
The store also has a market that sells ready meals.
“You know, lasagna, meatloaf, salads, soups, sides, desserts,” Tillery said.
The market also has a frozen food section that sells foods such as onion rings and fried okra, as well as larger pans of the most popular main dishes.
There’s also a very large selection of wines, “up to 150 different types of wine that we sell at wine shop prices, not restaurant prices,” Tillery said. “And then we have a full-service wine bar that serves a full menu.”
The menu includes examples of the proteins sold in the store and prepared to order.
“The menu isn’t huge, but it gives a good look at the different proteins we sell in the store,” Tillery said. “And our thing is you can go to the butcher counter and pick out your very own steak, and we’ll prepare it for you. We’ll cook it for you, serve it with a side and serve it to you in the wine bar.”
“It’s really like a high-end steakhouse experience, albeit without the stuffy steakhouse prices and atmosphere, but I would say the quality of the beef you get is better than what you would get at a steakhouse. It’s better.”
Construction at the Belmont site has just begun and is expected to take 10 to 12 months to complete.
“We just broke ground, so they’re in the process of grading the site, building the foundation and all that. So we’re anticipating that will take about six months. That’s going to put us on hold until January or February, depending on the weather, and probably another four months after that,” Tillery said. “So we’re anticipating that we’ll be able to open our doors in about 10 to 12 months.”
Tillery and co-owner Brian Miller have been interested in opening a location in Belmont for about two years.
“We’ve had our eye on Belmont for a while, but it took a while to find the right location, get all the permits and all that good stuff,” Tillery said.
Miller and Tillery met while working at Maggiano’s Little Italy, an Italian-American restaurant in South Park.
“I moved to North Carolina in 2003 to open this restaurant, and that’s where I met Brian. He’s one of our first teammates to come on board,” Tillery said. “He and I worked together there for 17 years. I worked at Maggiano’s for 20 years.”
“We had the idea of opening a butcher shop and market and we knew we wanted to serve something to eat, to showcase what we sell and to highlight the product,” he added.
To that end, they have partnered with The New York Butcher Shoppe, a franchise based in Greenville, South Carolina.
“They’re a very small franchise. They focus primarily on selling meat and some groceries and prepared foods,” Tillery said.
Tillery and Miller have partnered with the franchise to develop a “sort of hybrid vision” of the franchise that includes the butcher shop, wine bar and restaurant.
“And that’s kind of where it all started,” Tillery said.
They opened their first store in September 2019, just five years ago, and their goal is to open ten stores in ten years.
