Master Meat Crafter Gregory Burrowes now dominates a corner of Upper Manor Park Plaza with the physical expansion of his growing Butcher Block business. The quality meat purveyor has taken over the next-door shop, previously occupied by Candy Craze. With more shopping space and a courtyard, Butcher Block’s plans are no longer ideas. The additional layers of the brand’s customer-centred approach are now dialled up, and you’d be hard-pressed to find a similar experience elsewhere.

Besides the display cases of the finest quality meat (USDA AAA, Prime and Choice beef) and seafood, the first thing you’ll notice is the array of Weber charcoal and gas grills. Butcher Block is Weber’s official partner in Jamaica. As a result, Burrowes can offer a price point lower than wherever else one may purchase a Weber grill. We are blessed with year-round barbecue season here on The Rock, and Butcher Block has us covered from grills to seasonings by being a one-stop barbecue shopping destination.

Since opening Butcher Block in 2018, Burrowes has been an ardent supporter of local purveyors. With more square footage, he’s beefed up the offerings of locally made products. It seems that in addition to Christina Simonitsch’s Simo’s condiments, Simon Levy’s Roast cured meats and rubs, and Burrowes’s own Private Label brand, Butcher Block carries every imaginable top-of-the-line local product. There are Cannonball’s ready-to-bake frozen pot pies and quiches, Tooksie Kay Catering’s gourmet frozen pizzas, Outland Hurders cheeses, Uncle Ducky’s Scotch bonnet butter and pepper sauce, Rummy Rum Cakes, Fowl Mouth Farms pasture-raised eggs, and items from Oji Jaja’s Ashebre line, to name a few.

Butcher Block also carries an impressive selection of wines, spirits and beers. Speaking of beer, to enhance the shopping experience, there’s beer on tap for Butcher Block customers to sip whilst shopping. As soon as he’s able to, Burrowes will resume use of the courtyard with Friday evening happy hours and events like his very popular “You Buy It, We Grill It” series, and, you heard it here first, celebrity grill-offs!

The pandemic’s interruption of supply chains did not phase Burrowes. He’s a quick thinker and an astute businessman. He just got on with it. By being deft at building relationships (he is also the official Jamaican partner for the venerable Stonewall Kitchen brand), he found new partners to ensure that his customers continued to get the highest quality meat and seafood. He was known for having weekly deliveries of fresh, never frozen Scottish salmon. As that is not currently a possibility, he found the next best thing. Sashimi-grade Norwegian salmon. Of course, there are freezers still packed with the best that Rainforest Seafoods has to offer.

The expansion will also allow Burrowes to offer customers rotisserie chickens made with free-range, farm-raised, hormone-free Best Dressed birds, fresh-baked bread, and several surprises slated for the upcoming months. Burrowes has an innate ability to know what items to offer customers, things they never knew they needed. Spend any time in Butcher Block, and you’ll see that customers trust Burrowes implicitly. They’ll buy everything he recommends after he carefully listens to them.

The physical expansion of Butcher Block Manor Park couldn’t come at a better time. As the country faces a few weeks of no-movement, how better to while away the days than with quality meat and gourmet products?