By Delainey Muscato
St. Bonaventure University
Jared McCarthy, the owner of Toad’s Butcher Shop in Olean, has always been passionate about food, especially meat. After graduating high school, he went off to the Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York. During his time in college, he apprenticed under one of his instructors, running a USDA facility for a little over a year until he graduated. McCarthy said, “I knew I wanted to do stuff with food, but I never really knew what I wanted to do”. When he moved back to his hometown in Olean, NY, he realized something was missing. There were no places like where he had been working during school in the Olean area. McCarthy moved back to Olean in 2016 and opened Toad’s Butcher shop in December of 2017.
McCarthy shared how going to school in Hudson Valley opened his eyes to how much people really care about where their food is coming from. He said, “There’s a lot of farm-to-table mentality out there that six years ago, wasn’t here [Olean]”. After recognizing the opening in his own community for a fresh food shop, he opened his business. The butcher shop gets all its food from a company in Erie, Pennsylvania. It’s always fresh and never frozen, “the way it was supposed to be”, said McCarthy.
“Toad” was a nickname McCarthy had growing up. One why he chose it to be the name of his business he said, “We needed something unique and different and something people would remember. It worked out well”. The name is certainly one of a kind and has kept customers coming back for six years. In addition to their meat and seafood products, Toad’s also carries sauces, rubs, salsas, and pickles. These products come from a company called Burning Asphalt but have recently been rebranded under the Toad’s Butcher Shop logo. McCarthy said this project has been keeping them pretty busy over the past twelve months.
McCarthy reiterated the importance of knowing where your food comes from and how taking up that role in the community was an important thing to do. After six years of running his shop, he has begun to educate customers and community members on the importance of fresh food and knowing where your food is sourced from. He said, “There are not a lot of options for the more specialized stuff”. Toad’s fills a more niche area of food for the surrounding community. The shop can do much more customized orders than a typical superstore. “We cut everything to order so you can get the exact size steak that you want. You can get exactly what you’re looking for,” said McCarthy.
McCarthy works a full-time job outside of the butcher shop. He shared his days are long and as the owner, he does it all. He may be cutting meat one day and then repairing a piece of equipment the next.
As the seasons change, so do the orders the butcher shop tends to see. In summer, McCarthy does a lot of hot dogs and kabobs. Now, the fall season, people are bringing in a lot of venison. Soon, he’ll be cutting a lot of rib roast, prime rib, and filets for the upcoming holiday season.
While there are not currently any new projects planned for the company, McCarthy is excited for the business and where it is now compared to when it started out. “People bring in venison and we make sausages and hot dogs from it. That was something we never even thought about doing in the beginning”, he said. The company is constantly evolving and trying new things. McCarthy did not know how the business would do when he first started out, but he was excited to try. After coming up with the idea and the name he said, “Let’s just try it and see what happens. And here we are six years later”.