When Red Seal chefs Peter Keith and Will Kotowicz broke the news they would be opening a gourmet food market, the buzz was on.
After two years of serious planning, the chefs along with partner Glendon Tan opened Meuwly’s Artisan Food Market.
It’s a showcase store selling high-quality, locally made cured meats, fresh sausage, salami, charcuterie, pickled vegetables and condiments made from chef developed recipes.
Meuwly’s is located in Edmonton’s busy traffic area on 107 Ave. and 124 St., in the basement of the same building as Northern Chicken Restaurant. Several doors down is the nationally recognized Duchess Bakery.
The store opened two weeks ago and it is already gaining momentum.
The gourmet market grew out of Keith and Kotowicz’s passion for meat products. In Jan. 2017, without a physical space to call their own, the two innovative chefs hit upon the idea of opening the Secret Meat Club.
It was a subscription service, a way of providing home and restaurant deliveries of 15 types of sausage, charcuterie and freshly made preserves. Salami is the pièce de résistance.
“What sets us apart is we’re not using fillers. We just use free-range pork. The animals are well cared for. They’re happy and healthy. It’s not only better for the meat, but we want to have as little impact on the animals as possible,” said Keith, a homegrown St. Albert boy.
Most importantly Secret Meat Club created a test market that provided invaluable feedback for their freshly made products.
Now that Meuwly’s is open, the 4,500 sq. ft. market sports a storefront retail area, a kitchen for butchering and meat preparation, refrigeration and drying chambers as well as a separate kitchen for marinating and pickling vegetables.
Close to 80 per cent of the products are cured meats. The storefront also showcases grains, cut oats, red lentils, wheat berries and barley. Unpasteurized honey from Alberta bees and Colombian grown coffee beans roasted in Edmonton also diversify the product list.
While exhilarating, the shift from being a chef to business entrepreneur is huge. Many chefs aspire to owning an operation but it was an idea Keith dismissed.
“I really didn’t want to run a restaurant. The perception of the public doesn’t allow us to make much money. The store would allow us much more of work-life balance.
Don’t get me wrong. There are a lot of things about a restaurant I love. It’s an exciting career. But I have friends who lost a lot of money when their business went under. I wanted a rock-solid business model,” he explained.
A graduate of Paul Kane High, Keith went on to complete NAIT’s nationally renowned culinary program before working in several high-profile kitchens.
As an apprentice chef, Keith first met Kotowicz, then a Red Seal Chef, while employed at Edmonton's upscale Café de Ville.
“While cooking we’d talk about opening a business. We’d talk occasionally and brainstorm.”
Keith quickly learned Kotowicz had a hobby – experimenting with recipes and stuffing sausage links or making a fresh batch of charcuterie. Since both men loved to eat, hanging out and sampling Kotowicz’s creations was a mutually enjoyable pastime.
“He’s (Kotowicz) the creative genius. He’s been working on it for 10 years.”
But Keith wasn’t ready to commit to a project. From 2013 to 2014, he lived in Vancouver working at Chambar, one of Canada’s Top 50 restaurants.
“It says it’s Belgian-inspired cuisine, but it pioneered fusion cooking from Africa and the Middle East with South Pacific and Asian cuisine,” Keith noted.
While his culinary career was on track, he returned home to cement what was essentially a long distance relationship. Although the relationship dissolved, Keith launched a new career.
Roughly at the same time, Alberta’s economy started tilting downwards. Despite the economic downturn, both Red Seal chefs saw a niche for marketing locally made gourmet products.
Charcuterie, a way of curing meats before refrigeration, feeds a highly popular restaurant trend. Many foodies have also hopped on the craze, either entertaining at home or at special events, serving platters of charcuterie, cheese, pickles and fermented veggies.
Developing and selling locally made gourmet products is a win-win, especially now that import tariffs on American made products will increase prices of similar products.
Meuwly’s mandate also reflects the increasing need for sustainability. Kotowicz and Keith are part of a new breed of chef that argues for minimizing the environmental impact and decreasing food wastage. To their credit, they also uphold better treatment of animals.
They selected two Alberta farms near Calgary to supply pork meats: Bear and the Flower Farm as well as Spraggs Meat Shop.
Bear and Flower is a new generation of farmers that raise outdoor free-range pork on an 11-acre paddock. That’s about the size of 10 football fields. The pigs are bred for Alberta’s varying climates and are fed Omega 3 that produces richer, more flavourful meat.
““The reason we picked them is that it’s a pasture farm. It’s a natural environment and the animals are comfortable. If they’re content, it improves the quality of the meat, especially for salami.”
Spraggs also adheres to raising hogs in a low-stress, open pasture enjoying the benefits of fresh air and sunlight. One of the advantages of Spragg’s meat is that the family-owned business has complete control over the hogs' food, safety, health and processing.
So far several Edmonton restaurants – Clementine, Three Boars Eatery and Woodwork – as well as numerous chefs working on individual projects have supported Meuwly’s.
Keith also added the business is in talks with two St. Albert retailers to sell their products. Announcements will be made after contracts are inked.
“We’re excited to support local business. By supporting local meat producers and by buying vegetables at local markets for our pickling, we’re helping the environment and the economy. And we’re very excited about that.”
