Uptown mainstay Fleishers shutting down
Wall Street butcher shop has served loyal customer base since 2004
KINGSTON, N.Y. >> An Uptown butcher shop that opened 13 years ago and has been patronized by a loyal customer base is closing. Fleishers Craft Butchery at 307 Wall St. — which opened in 2004 as the Fleshier company’s flagship store — will close March 18, according to Samantha Garwin, the company’s interim chief executive officer, and a sign posted on the shop’s front door.
Garwin, in an open letter to the community that the company emailed to the Freeman on Tuesday, said the Wall Street shop is in a building that’s being sold.
“When we learned our Kingston landlord was selling our building, we were faced with a tough decision: Start over in a new space, or end this chapter in the Hudson River Valley on a high
note, proud of our accomplishments,” Garwin wrote. “The impact of each choice was staggering: one logistically, the other existentially.
“After weighing the challenges of getting product, people and supplies the 2.5 hours to Kingston from Brooklyn, we determined that, as a company, we’re no longer equipped — financially or strategically — to support a location so far from our headquarters.”
Fleishers is based in Brooklyn and has a store there, and it also has stores in Westport and Greenwich, Conn., according to its website.
Garwin said it’s disheartening to close the Kingston store.
“We’re sad,” she said in her letter. “We know you’re sad. Perhaps even angry.”
Garwin said that when Josh and Jessica Applestone opened the Fleishers store on Wall Street, “it was the beginning of something special.”
“With the farm-to-table movement in its infancy, you jumped right on board, helping us to lead the charge across the country,” she wrote, addressing the Applestones. “You spoke passionately about us with friends and family who you knew were demanding a product like ours. You genuinely believed in the mission we put forth at our humble meat counter, and thus the movement began.”
Garwin said the Kingston shop, like the company’s others, has maintained “fiercely loyal followers, each doing [a] part to fight the industrial system and increase access to higher-quality meat.”
Amy Keller, owner of Jane’s Ice Cream, located in the same building at Flashers, said the butcher shop’s closing is upsetting.
“We are grief-stricken,” she said. “It was the kind of business that rounds out a neighborhood ...
Theresa Misasi, owner of Theresa & Co., a clothing store at 303 Wall St., also lamented Fleishers’ closing.
“It is upsetting, and so many great people work there,” she said.
Mayor Steve Noble said Fleishers “has left an indelible mark” on Kingston.
The shop “will certainly be missed,” Noble said in an email. “I wish them the very best and hope that they will always see Kingston as a home away from home and a place where their business was valued and appreciated.”
Fleishers merged in 2015 with a company called Craft Butchery, which was founded in 2011 by former Fleishers apprentices Paul Nessel and Ryan Fibiger, according to the company.
The Applestones parted ways with Fleishers at that time, and Nellel and Fibiger, along with Garwin and Chief Financial Officer Christopher Hille, brought Fleishers and Craft under one banner.
“On March 18, as we mourn the end of an era, let’s not say ‘goodbye,’ but ‘’til next time,’” Garwin wrote. “Because while you won’t be able to walk to our Wall Street shop any longer, Fleishers will continue on as a force in the industry, holding ourselves and others to the highest standards of quality, ethics and transparency.”