You’ve seen their meat on the menu at many of the finest restaurants in Western Canada, and soon you’ll be able to go right to the source at a new butcher shop and eatery in North Vancouver.
The idea for Two Rivers Specialty Meats was first sliced and diced on the banks of the Kicking Horse River in Golden where North Shore natives Jason and Morgot Pleym were living in a converted school bus, working for a whitewater rafting company. Jason had been a sales rep for a meat company, but he and Margot both quit their jobs and left the Lower Mainland for a wild summer.
“It was pretty awesome, actually,” says Jason with a laugh. “I pulled all of the seats out of that bus. … My brother finished it. It had a bed. We plugged it in and literally drove it down to the river.”
“It had a great view!” adds Margot.
They knew, however, that whitewater rafting was not likely their longterm plan, and so they spent the summer of 2007 dreaming of the future. Through family and work connections, they’d entered into an agreement with a cattle ranch near Pemberton. If they wanted it, they could have a steady supply of beef coming down to the Lower Mainland that they could cut up and sell.
“The opportunity was there, it was really just, ‘What do you guys want to do?’” recalls Jason. “And I didn’t really want to do it! Start my own business?”
“I did,” Margot says with a laugh.
“Margot did,” says Jason.
And Margot won. By January of 2008 they’d acquired a small warehouse in North Vancouver – they were both born in North Van with Margot growing up in Horseshoe Bay and Jason moving around a lot – and the beef was on the way, four head of cattle every two weeks. There was, however, one big problem.
“I wasn’t a butcher,” says Jason. He may have the look of a butcher – Jason has a shaved head and is a big strong slab of muscle himself – but his work in the meat business had never involved cutting it up. “I knew the customers, I knew how to sell it. I just had to cut it. That’s a big undertaking. … I know my way around a knife. I’ve played with carcass before. But beef is such a big beast.”
So he took a course. And as Jason tells it, his ignorance was a blessing in disguise as he was never indoctrinated into the typical band-saw butchering of North America, instead starting his career learning the more elegant and old-fashioned techniques of seam butchery – with a focus on preserving muscle groups rather than just chopping – that is more often employed in Europe.
He learned on the job. Margot mostly did office work, but there were times in those early days when she had to get her hands dirty too.
“There are a couple of photos of us with the big grinder and our hairnets – well, my hairnet – and shoving all the meat into the grinder and packaging it all up,” she says. “We knew going into it it was going to be a risk, but we had nothing to lose. We were just living in a school bus, we had no money. When we started it we were living in my parent’s house, and then moved into my grandma’s house. We were flying by the seat of our pants.”
They slowly began to build a client list. A couple of grocery stores in Whistler, some local delis. They’d go meet chefs and sell them on the quality of their product, most of it sourced locally from small farms and raised ethically without hormones, antibiotics or chemical feed additives.
“It’s always been a business based on the transparency of the product, how we deal with it, how we work with it and what we can provide a chef,” says Jason.
Over time, the business blossomed. These days they work with more than 600 customers around the province and beyond, ranging from Hawksworth Restaurant – frequently voted the best in Vancouver – to Deep Cove’s Arms Reach Bistro, to North Vancouver’s Puccini’s Deli, to The Bridge Brewing Company. Two Rivers now moves up to 25 head of cattle per week, with nearly the same amount of chicken and many other specialty meats. After starting with just two workers less than a decade ago, Two Rivers now employs close to 70 people.
“It’s amazing how it’s actually evolved,” says Jason as he surveys the bustling scene at company headquarters. “(Somehow) it just turned into a trusted source.”
Things are busier than ever these days as the crew is getting ready to open their doors to the public with a traditional working butchery, a deli and takeaway counter, a 32-seat restaurant with an additional 16-seat patio located at 180 Donaghy Ave., a couple of blocks north of the Northshore Auto Mall.
At a recent media event chefs gave guests a taste of what is to come, rolling out burgers that were dry-aged for 60 days, thick cider-glazed beef ribs, sausage rolls, charcuterie, and crispy chicken drumsticks. Even dessert was juiced up, with popcorn cooked in beef fat (very nice) and doughnut holes fried in beef tallow (amazing!).
They’re doing final prep work on the new space, with an expected opening in mid-October. People already sometimes pop by their head office looking to buy some meat, and soon they’ll be able to satisfy all those cravings and more.
“We’re so excited to be able to be more a part of the community and have people come in and visit with us and chat with us about the product,” says Margot. “It’ll be a good opportunity for us to get out there and show everybody what we’ve got.”
