Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors

Although Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors have always had a respectable reputation in the meatpacking industry, they were still relatively unknown. It was not until the early 1990s—when Chef Mario Batali made Pat LaFrieda’s company the primary provider of his restaurants—that they began to receive more attention. As Mario Batali gradually rose to prominence, restaurateurs such as Danny Meyer (owner of Shake Shack) also decided to choose Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors as their main meat supplier.[6] In 2004, when Shake Shack started serving Pat LaFrieda’s custom burger blend, both the restaurant and the meat company became famous.[7] Since then, the company has become quite popular as Pat LaFrieda Jr. began to appear on television shows such as Martha Stewart, ABC News Nightline, Anthony Bourdain's No Reservations, Andrew Zimmern’s Bizarre Foods, and The Mike Colameco show on PBS.[3] New York Magazine has even dubbed Pat LaFrieda Jr., “The Magician of Meat”.[8] On April 4, 2012 the meat supplying company debuted in a reality show on Food Network called “Meat Men”.[9] The show documented the inner workings of the company and followed Pat LaFrieda Jr., his father Pat LaFrieda Sr. and his cousin Mark Pastore through their work. Besides appearing on television, the company has also had a mobile-app developed for them by the production company Zero Point Zero.[10]

Inside the facilities of Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors are “two dry-aging rooms that house 5,000–6,000 (sub) primal cuts of meat (the equivalent of over 80,000 steaks)”.[3] They also own multiple grinders that produce 100,000 burgers every night.[11] Because the company operates 24 hours a day, six days a week, Pat LaFrieda Jr. claims that the company is able to “process meat that feed over 300,000 people a day.[3]” They also cater to about 9,000 restaurants, most of which are located in New York City.[12] To meet the needs (for burger patties) of these restaurants and other customers, Pat LaFrieda Jr. works with restaurants to produce customized burger patties that contain varying percentages of fat combined with brisket, chuck, short rib, and skirt steak.[13] So far he has come up with 25–30 distinct blends of burger patties with hundreds of additional variations available. One of the many restaurants that follow this combination is Minetta Tavern, which uses an 80/20 lean meat to fat ratio for their burgers.[14] Pat LaFrieda Meat Purveyors' operations bring in more than $40 million in annual revenues.[15]