KANSAS CITY, Mo. – Chris Carter and James Peisker, co-owners of Porter Road, which includes a processing facility, brick and mortar butcher shop and an online butcher shop, share the philosophy that if you know where food comes from, you can generally make it taste better.

The two former restaurant-kitchen mates opened their whole-animal butcher shop in Nashville, Tennessee, in 2010 with the thought of running a little family business together and just maybe they would hire a high school kid to do the dishes. They now have about 30 employees at the processing facility alone and work with approximately 40 farmers in Kentucky and Tennessee who supply the company’s slaughterhouse with beef, hogs and lamb. Read about their unique approach to slaughter, fabrication, business plans to scale up and change the industry in the February issue of MEAT+POULTRY.

View slideshow of Porter Road