Three generations in beef. One jar of tallow.
We did not discover beef fat. We grew up with it.
Our family has been in the Chicago meat business for three generations. Nea Agora, the family butcher shop, has been open in Chicago’s Little Italy since 1940. We grew up going to feedlots, processing plants, and slaughterhouses. We know what the inside of this industry looks like because we were inside it before we had a commercial reason to be.
We carry two food cultures that share one conviction. Italian tradition cured fatback in marble caves and called it luxury. Mexican tradition slow-cooked in fat in copper pots and called it celebration. Neither culture accepted the American industrial food industry’s verdict that fat was the enemy. We didn’t either.
The fat our family stopped sending to commodity rendering.
Our family sources and processes premium Midwestern beef. When those animals are broken down, fat is trimmed from the cuts. That fat had always gone to commodity rendering — mixed with other sources, processed until neutral, sold for low margin.
That decision bothered us. The same premium standard that made these animals worth buying as steaks made the fat worth more than commodity price. Greaves is the correction. The fat from animals our family selected, rendered by people who know what they are looking at, filtered once, and sold for what it actually is.
Nea Agora opens on Taylor Street in Chicago’s Little Italy.
Purely Meat Company established. Premium Midwestern beef sourced and sold to restaurant and retail customers.
Greaves launches.
“The food industry told us fat was the enemy. Two food cultures in our own family never believed them.”
Greaves & Co.