Project Person // Profile #4

_{Subscribe here to receive Project Person each Friday morning.}

Meet Jared McFadden // Project Person #4

What project are you currently working on?  Union Bros Meat Market, a butcher shop in Peachtree Corners, Ga.

What did it take to get started? A lot of capital, a vision, and a lot of support from the community.

What’s your most impressive or favorite stat? Having zero transactions on day one and now having 6000+ transactions each year.

What’s something that never would have happened for you without this project? The people in the community that I have met have been amazing. Customers/clients have become friends and I absolutely love that!

What keeps you up at night? Wondering “What is the next right decision?”

What led a Chief Human Resources Officer to order $8,000 in wagyu beef and then proceed to—unintentionally, more or less—give it away?

(I think he’s asked himself that same question a hundred times over.)

Jared McFadden, CHRO at 800-employee Booster Enterprises, loves his job. He’s been there fifteen years, starting with thirty-ish employees and growing alongside the business. Now a member of the C-Suite, Jared is immensely thankful for the work he gets to do and the way the job has provided for his family of six. 

But he’s had a persistently hard-to-scratch creative and entrepreneurial itch that work in HR just hasn’t reached.

In an effort to pursue these passions, he’s drafted clothing and brand ideas, and he and his family have flipped multiple houses, moving six times in eleven years.

But when a friend helped Jared put a business model around a butcher shop concept, that’s when he finally knew he had something worth pursuing. 

Jared and his friend Jody, a fellow executive at his 9-5 gig, spent months modeling a concept for a locally sourced, high-end butcher shop that made the art of buying and cooking meat more accessible to the general public. 

A knowledgeable and friendly butcher would share cooking advice and secret recipes. Meat would be cut and vacuum-sealed so the pricing and sizing would be transparent. Artisanally-made cookware, spices, wines, and sides would be sold on beautifully designed shelving, offering everything one needed for a meal around the table. 

Everything became real once Jared floated a name by Jody in their group text.

It was mid-2020, and the country was in the height of political and social unrest. Jared returned to the words from the US Constitution's preamble—“in order to form a more perfect union…”—and imagined sharing a meal around a table with people from different backgrounds. 

It perfectly summarized their mission for the business, and Union Bros Meat Market was born. 

Everything became real real when they ordered $30,000 in meat. 

They had leased and outfitted a building, hired three full-time staff away from other jobs (paying them their salary even when construction woes delayed opening by fifteen weeks), and they placed an order for their inventory.

But unlike t-shirts or books that can sit in a warehouse, their inventory—if not sold quickly—would spoil.  

They finally opened the doors on September 10, 2022 to a crowd lining the sidewalk outside the door.

Friends and his launch team bought both t-shirts and dinner.

But so did strangers. It was working. 

Jared hoped to have a moment when he could walk by the line of new customers and just soak in the moment, but instead all he remembers of the day is the chaos of people rushing in, the questions that were asked about the products, the restocking of the shelves… 

One day, one of their new refrigerators broke down, and they frantically stuffed meat in personal freezers across town. In those early weeks, Jared experienced something he had yet to experience at his day job: there was no one else to solve the problem. 

When the shelves needed to be built and they were over their construction budget, he was building shelves. When the staff went home for the night and meat still needed to be cut, he was staying late and rolling up his sleeves. As the founder and owner, the buck stopped with him. 

But he set limits where he could. From the beginning, he decided that he wouldn’t let Union Bros cheat his family or his HR role. And this was no small task! He had a very full-time job, a wife with a very full-time job as a preschool director, three small children and—just a few months after opening Union Bros—a baby on the way. 

He hired staff to manage the store, was careful about working on weekends, and protected his hours at Booster as if they were stacks of cash—stealing time from his job, he decided, was just as bad as stealing from their bank account. 

This naturally created an internal tension that he still struggles to manage. He knows Union Bros could grow faster if he could give more of his time, but he’s put himself on a strict time budget, and he’s decided he’s not going to go into time debt. 

But that doesn’t mean he’s not thinking about the shop some while he’s at work.

He checks the cash register app on his phone daily, feeling at peace when they’ve had their first sale. (While they’ve experienced some slow days, they’ve yet to have their first $0 day—and he admits to the idea of buying something from the store himself if need-be just to avoid that!) 

He’s also constantly thinking about what the store should offer.

At the beginning, he had his own guesses at what would sell. As a high-end butcher shop in a nice part of town, he decided to offer wagyu beef—the fanciest steak product on the market, selling at $150 per pound. He ordered the smallest quantity he could to start with, investing nearly $8,000. He prepared for this to be the draw that brought customers to his store. 

But instead, his clientele wanted pre-made meatloaf and hamburger kits and filet mignon date night bundles, and he found himself giving wagyu samples away, free with purchase. 

This perplexed Jared until he met with a fellow butcher shop owner who distilled this phenomenon into an unbelievably relatable sentence: “I wouldn’t shop at my own store,” the man said. 

Translation? His store was built for his customers, who had very different preferences than his own. 

Jared (and the occasional customer) might have wanted wagyu beef, but the majority were busy families who wanted locally-sourced, fun and easy meals. 

So Jared decided to become a student of his customers. 

When he was at the store, he didn’t introduce himself as the owner. He liked to watch how a customer scanned the shelves, and he listened to the questions they asked the butcher. What did they want more of? Where were they confused or overwhelmed? 

He’s since developed weekly specials, which he shares in their weekly email: Meatloaf Monday, Taco Tuesday, and the famous Peachtree Corners Date Night Special. 

And it’s paid off, with their perfect 5 star rating on Google as proof.

He says the most amazing thing has been the number of “yeses” people have made. When they opened the door, they had zero customers, but each week, around 140 people say yes to something Jared and his team have offered. 

And behind each of those yeses is a meal shared around a table, a realization of his initial mission. A greater union. 

At the end of most days, Jared says he has two thoughts in equal measures: 

This might be Union Bros’ last day. 

And, 

I bet we could open up ten more of these stores. 

Such is small business, right?!

“So what’s the plan?” I asked him at the end of our interview. 

With all that Jared is balancing, I almost expected him to say it’s been a good run but that he’s ready to just shut it down and simplify. 

Without hesitation though, he says, “Oh I’d like to do this again.” 

I didn’t ask him what “this” meant. To be honest, I wonder if he even knows. Ten more of these stores? A new business altogether? 

When it gets down to it, I assume it’s the ownership that he would do again—the refining thrill, for better or worse, of building something, learning and adjusting, and having someone say yes to what you’ve created.

-Callie

Visit Union Bros Meat Market at 5275 Peachtree Pkwy Suite 105, in Peachtree Corners, Georgia. I’d also recommend signing up for their weekly email—it’s great!

Next week, I’ll share a primer all about launching a business, taking notes from Union Bros’ launch strategy. Stay tuned!