Our Story
Having always been involved in the food world in one way or another, be it butchering, cooking, catering or BBQing, it was always the center point of our family get-togethers as well as my way of making a living, for the most part. As it be, my first born son Ed Jr. was raised in this environment (the work, the food, the BBQs, the talk, the parties, etc.) and became enamored by it so much that he chose to pursue it as well, graduating Cum Lauda From UNLV with a business hospitality and culinary degree and a Certified Sommelier by the Court of Masters.
Having this food thing in common, it was most often the topic of our conversations with each other and our connection point. Not having the opportunity to go to culinary school myself, I was able to live and learn vicariously through him while he attended his culinary classes. This common passion has always had us trading ideas and recipes for both food and restaurant concepts.
While not ever wanting to have any of my sons live my dreams for me, it has come with many discussions, a lot of patience, some heated debates (and perhaps a little bit of salesmanship) the decision to launch together:
The Butcher’s Kitchen “CHAR-B-QUE", a wood fired slow BBQ, Rotisserie & open char pit.
About the Owners
Ed Ferencik Sr.
I was born in 1958 in upstate New York in the Village of Endicott, third of eight children of Czechoslovakian and Canadian French nationality. I am the father to three boys: Ed Jr. (30), Robert (28) and Tomas (26) and a husband to wife, Laura.
I became interested in butchery as a young child when my father would take my siblings and I to a local slaughter to see how animals were processed, for he had been raised on a small family farm. We would also shop for our weekly meats every Sunday after attending church at that same local family meat operations wholesale retail store. I was always impressed watching the old world artisan butchers cut and process the fresh meat and make sausage and cure meats.
At age 12 I worked in a childhood friend’s Italian restaurant and began learning to cook. His father and grandfather were butchers by trade and both had an influence on me becoming a butcher. At age 13 I got a job with the same local slaughter house/meat processor as a counter hop and apprentice butcher where I learned basic butchery, sausage making and meat processing. At age 18 I traveled to the San Francisco bay area and then San Jose California. Working through the butcher’s union dispatch system I worked in many different meat operations both wholesale and retail.
In 1980 I returned to New York for a short while and continued to butcher in retail and freezer beef operations before heading back to California. I worked for one year as a butcher and then a meat department operations manager/meat buyer for one of the nations first and largest club stores, PAK-N-SAVE. Overseeing several meat, sea food and deli departments doing as much as 10 million a year per unit sales. These stores were the blue print for what Costco meat operations are today.
I left the corporate grind in 1998 and got back to basics working for an old friend and sausage maker at San Martine meats, San Martine Ca. processing wild hogs, game and farm kill, as well as honing my sausage making, smoking and curing skills.
By 2004 I moved to Reno, Nevada and started Butcher’s Kitchen INC, a housewares development company specializing in home meat preparation tools like the patented invention of the Impressor line of meat preparation tools. It all begins with an idea. Maybe you want to launch a business. Maybe you want to turn a hobby into something more. Or maybe you have a creative project to share with the world. Whatever it is, the way you tell your story online can make all the difference.
Ed Ferencik Jr.
I grew up with a father (Big Ed) who was a butcher his entire life and a mother who, when she wasn’t raising us she was working in restaurants as a waitress. Both had a strong cultural and culinary background growing up and translated that into the home when raising my two younger brothers and I. My parents got me into the kitchen and cooking at a young age and that’s where it all began.
Throughout my adolescent years I enjoyed baking and making after school snacks for my friends. Then in high school I started taking this more seriously by cooking dinner often for the family; at about that time the Food Network had really taken off and serious chefs were constantly teaching new techniques on TV. By my senior year of high school I had decided to make it a career and go to culinary school. After much debate I chose UNLV’s Harrah’s Hotel College to benefit from not only a culinary degree but really a well-rounded business degree focus on all aspects of the hospitality industry.
During my time in school I worked for chefs like Charlie Trotter, Kerry Simon, David Myers and Brian Howard, both in the back of the house as a cook as well the front as a server and Sommelier. A few years after school I decided to return home to Reno to be with family and friends and really get back to my roots. I worked in a boutique wine shop and then as a Captain and Sommelier at Bimini steak house in the Peppermill. During that time I honed my skills behind the bar and in the beverage world.
From about two years into college until now my father, Big Ed, had been has been begging the question about opening a restaurant together. And here we are.
