Melrose butcher Jered Standing’s philosophy on selling meat went against the grain.
As fattier cuts of beef like Wagyu gained popularity over the years, Standing chose to source 100 percent grass-fed and grass-finished beef, generally a much leaner type of beef compared to the ultra marbled Wagyu breed that seems to be everywhere now. And all his pork and poultry were “raised on pasture” within the state of California.
“Standing’s won’t work,” Standing wrote on Instagram, one year after he opened Standing’s Butchery on Melrose Avenue in 2017. “Nobody cares about that sustainable shit,” he recalled someone telling him. “Someone here in LA. And you know what. It bothered me. I’m really sensitive. Full of self-doubt. And I’ll admit it. I don’t always take criticism very well.”
On February 22, Standing, the 44-year-old owner of one L.A.’s most popular butcher shops, Standing’s Butchery, died, according to the Los Angeles County Medical Examiner.
Over the weekend, customers, journalists, and fellow butchers from as far as the UK expressed their condolences on social media.