Scattered clouds with the possibility of an isolated thunderstorm developing late. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%..
Scattered clouds with the possibility of an isolated thunderstorm developing late. Low near 70F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 30%.
Patrick Woosley with some Tomahawk steaks, which have become a favorite of his recently, though he suggests to only get it for special occasions.
Patrick Woosley with some Tomahawk steaks, which have become a favorite of his recently, though he suggests to only get it for special occasions.
In September, Patrick’s Meat Market will celebrate it’s seventh anniversary. Despite the overall small operation, with three to four workers being in on a busy day and only two on a Wednesday, owner Patrick Woosley is happy with the volume the market can move and the clientele that he’s built over the years.
“There are some doctors and nurses at the hospital, people who work at Maple’s and live around here that come by every evening to pick up what they’re going to eat for dinner, I call them my Cheers crowd,” Woosley said. “With Cheers, it’s the same people in the same bar every day and it’s the same thing at four o’clock in afternoon, you’ll see the same faces rolling in every day, people swing by and pick up what they’ll cook for dinner. I tell people all the time we can’t be everything to everybody but we can be something to everybody.”
At Patrick’s, they have a selection of more than just meats. They recently purchased a new freezer that they’re trying to stock with some vegetables and other produce that people can purchase alongside their meats to cook with. In the freezers, people can find school lunchroom food, chicken nuggets and other foods.
“You can’t just go anywhere and buy school pizzas, crispitos and Italian dunkers that the kids like. We don’t offer the million products that Walmart has, we don’t offer everything that Foodland or Piggly Wiggly has but we do is try to specialize in what we do have and I try to have the best price, best quality. If there’s something that I don’t have, I try my best to make sure to order it for people. The meat case is 24-feet long that don’t mean that we don’t cut stuff all day in the cutting room, hand it off and it doesn’t even get put out in the display. We’re trying to bring in more fresh produce, some deli meat, cheeses, stuff like that, just trying to bring in new stuff a little at a time.”
Most of the meats at Patrick’s come from some local companies in Florence and Birmingham, with some specialty items coming from other meat cutters that Patrick’s doesn’t cut, like sausages. Woosley stresses that Patrick’s is a meat shop and not a slaughter facility, sharing the story of a man who brought in a pig hoping to have it cut up at the shop.
“A lot of people expect us to have cows and chickens and pigs hanging out the back and we don’t do that. We have boxes of chucks, shoulders and ribs and we break it down from that,” Woosley said.
Another thing Patrick’s has utilized is their social media, with their social media posts reaching many new customers outside of the normal base. Woosley says he has as many people drive in from the Huntsville and the surrounding areas as he does people living two streets away, attributing that reach to social media presence. Woosley talked about a man from Tallahassee who came in with a deep freeze powered by a generator to buy school pizzas just because the man couldn’t find any elsewhere.
“That’s not an everyday occurrence but we do have people come in from everywhere,” Woosley said.
The school pizzas are a surprising hit, selling anywhere from 10 to 20 boxes of school pizzas every week. People from as nearby as neighboring states to as far as soldiers overseas would find Patrick’s through social media, see that they sell school pizzas and reach out to see if he could ship a case of school pizzas.
“If I could figure out a way to ship reasonably, I don’t know that I’d ever cut meat, I’d just ship pizzas and school stuff,” Woosley said. “Considering we’re a meat market and (school pizzas) are something extra we sell, that’s pretty good to me.”
About the busiest time of the year for Woosley is football season, particularly for Alabama or Auburn games and especially for the Iron Bowl.
As an owner, Woosley looks to take care of each customer that walks into his store, whether it involves cutting a steak for a rich man or helping someone stretch a $10 budget to last for a week.
“I was always born and raised in church, you treat everybody the same regardless of who they are, where they’ve been, what they’ve done. I don’t care if you have a food stamp card, pay with cash or card, it’s all the same to me,” Woosley said. “Like I said, I can’t be everything to everybody but I can be something to everybody.”
In the community, Patrick’s can be found in nearly every football program in the county, looking to help all the students in the community when asked. Woosley currently has several orders pinned up going towards different schools, trying to offer what they can to assist.
“We help with little league, football, cheer. It’s not always a $100 donation, sometimes it’s ‘hey, can we get a deal on some hotdogs,’ or ‘we’re having a fundraiser and we’re selling boston butts’, it’s not always just a monetary here’s a million dollars, go spend it wisely,” Woosley said. “Section approached me the other day about 100 hot dogs. That’s not a major contribution but if they sell them for $2 or $3, that’s $200 or $300 for free. Even though I’m just making a little contribution, they can turn that into something bigger for themselves. I’ll be answering a call from a local school needing this and I’d be like ‘didn’t I just do that’ and no, it’d be Pisgah, this is Woodville. I try to help them all.”
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