Down a two lane road on the outskirts of Princeton, Ky., next to a cemetery and past the Light of Truth Church is the Porter Road Butcher Meat Co. facility — a staging ground for what the Nashville-based startup Porter Road hopes will be a revolution in the American meatpacking industry. For the company’s co-founders, James Peisker and Chris Carter, the refashioning of the meat business in America is the next step in a nearly decade-long journey since the former chefs first met working in the restaurant of Nashville’s historic Hermitage Hotel. The two men started their butcher business, selling locally sourced meat from the East Nashville Farmer’s Market in 2010 and eventually moved to a storefront in the same neighborhood a year later.

When the residents of Nashville want a good cut of meat for dinner or a barbecue, they stop by butcher shop Porter Road, where everything is sourced from a local farm and hand-cut by people who know their meats. The neighborhood favorite, which opened in 2011, was founded by trained chefs Chris Carter and James Peisker, who realized while shopping for their catering business that it was difficult to find quality meat, even when they visited farmer's markets. In 2018, they took the business online to recreate the local experience for home cooks nationwide. "Bringing Porter Road online truly happened out of necessity,

Porter Road, an online animal butcher shop, has secured $3.7 million in seed funding. The investors included Max Ventures, Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, Tribeca Venture Partners, Collaborative Fund and Great Oaks VC. Porter Road – the first online, whole animal butcher shop catering to today’s consumer appetite for sustainability and transparency in the meat and poultry food system – today announced that it has raised $3.7 million in seed funding from investors including Max Ventures, Slow Ventures, BoxGroup, Tribeca Venture Partners, Collaborative Fund, Great Oaks VC, among others.

For the last seven years Porter Road has carved out a profitable niche selling small-batch meat to discerning shoppers in Nashville, Tennessee. Keen to start peddling its prime cuts of beef, pork and lamb to the rest of the country, the butcher opened an online store last month. Porter Road and an expanding list of upstarts are tapping into growing demand for meat that’s sustainably raised on family farms even as Americans open their minds and wallets to buying fresh food online. While a tiny part of the almost $55 billion U.S. meat industry, these companies are providing an alternative—albeit a pricey one—to the mass-produced steak, pork and chicken sold by giant agribusinesses like Perdue and Tyson. “What we're trying to do is bring fresh meat delivery service into the 21st century," says Porter Road co-founder James Peisker.

A new website from Porter Road, a chef-owned butcher shop in Nashville, sells meat from small farms, delivered fresh, nationally and within two days. James Peisker and Chris Carter opened their store in 2011 after having difficulty finding meat that satisfied them for their fledgling catering company. The meats and poultry are pasture-raised by farmers who do not use antibiotics or hormones on the animals. The Porter Road partners do their own butchering, dry-age meats for 14 days, and offer a range of cuts, though some are limited and wait-listed. Prices and shipping charges are moderate.