Like many businesses, Fairway Packing, which supplies beef and other products to local restaurants, had to pivot during the pandemic.As restaurants, Fairway’s core business, shuttered in mid-March 2020 and statewide stay-at-home orders followed a week later, proprietor Emmet Baratta, along with his cousins Gino, Joey and Peter, were uncertain what to do next.“My cousins and I sat around the office and we looked at each other and said: ‘Guys, we’re not going down like this. We need to figure something out,’ ” Baratta said in a news release. “This is not how Fairway Packing is going to end.”The family-owned meat distributor from Detroit’s Eastern Market area has been in business for three generationsAfter receiving calls from local butcher shops and grocery stores that were looking for products within 24 hours of the shutdowns, the cousins figured it out. They shifted their focus to retail and stepped up their online presence by selling products directly to consumers.Now the changes brought on by the pandemic have yielded the Steak Shop by Fairway Packing, a brick-and-mortar store on Mack Avenue in Grosse Pointe Woods that sells Fairway’s steaks, chops, burgers, sausage and poultry.More: Dave’s Hot Chicken’s third Michigan location opens Friday in TroyMore: BJ’s Warehouse deal saves you 75 cents a gallon on gas: How to get itMore: Restaurant operators face staffing shortages, higher food costs and menu pricesPivoting to e-commerce helped Fairway through the uncertainty accompanying the pandemic, and it was the perfect time “for the third generation of Fairway to take the company to a whole new level,” Baratta said.Once open, the Steak Shop is expected to feature prepackaged meats, poultry, seasonal items such as turkeys, hamburgers, hot dogs and sausages. The focus of the nearly 1,300-square-foot store will be Fairway’s popular cuts of beef, including prime steaks, strips, fillets, Wagyu beef and long-bone rib-eye steaks known as Tomahawks. There will also be a full line of game meats. Fairway’s chophouse grind for burgers is a blend of ground brisket, short ribs and chuck. Fairway says its beef is sourced from sustainable farms that raise animals humanely. At Eastern Market, it has an aging room where several metro Detroit restaurants have beef aged for their customers.“We want our customers to know that when they come into the retail site, they’re going to feel what a special, premium experience it is,” Gino Baratta said. “We’re involved with every step of the process from working with the finest farms in the Midwest until the meat comes to your table. There’s a lot of love that goes into what we do.”Subscription boxes of meats will be curated by local chefs such as Anthony Lombardo of SheWolf in Detroit. Subscriptions will include recipes and instructions that will help home cooks re-create a restaurant experience.Fairway’s new store also expects to feature demonstrations from local chefs who will offer cooking techniques and explain the various kinds of steaks and how to prepare them. Cooking utensils, seasonings, cutting boards, steak knives, cast iron pans and butcher blocks will be among the items for sale.The Steak Shop by Fairway Packing, at 20877 Mack Ave. in Grosse Pointe Woods, expects to open by the end of the month.Contact Detroit Free Press food writer Susan Selasky and send food and restaurant news to: [email protected]. Follow @SusanMariecooks on Twitter.Support local journalism and become a digital subscriber to the Free Press.
