At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, most small meat processors were worried about keeping and finding employees. Quite a few were questioning their survival. But for Mike Gregg, it was an opportune time to enter the meat business — following a career as a commercial artist. Mike worked at advertising agencies for 15 years and then started his own agency where he worked for another 27 years.
Today, he and his wife Phyllis are co-owners of McGregor’s Butcher & Bistro in Overland Park, Kan., which is part of the greater Kansas City metro area.
“It was always in the back of my mind that if I could combine my own meat shop and a specialty restaurant, it might just work out,” he said. “We leased 6,700 square feet in a strip mall and devoted 1,200 square feet to the meat shop and the rest to the bistro. We opened the butcher shop on May 10 of 2023 and three days later welcomed customers to our adjoining restaurant.”
Gregg, a 69-year-old newcomer to the meat industry, recently celebrated his first year in business with some ambitious goals and plenty of success.
Inside the establishment
The 130-seat restaurant is led by an executive chef with 20 employees and a front-of-house manager. The butcher shop has a new manager and a half-dozen workers with a service counter offering meat selections, prepackaged meals and gourmet ingredients. McGregor’s stirred the pot by “listening to their customers’ needs and wishes” and produces brats and multiple versions of their in-house sausages and offer special bundles on holidays or for events. The Italian sausage is one of its most popular items.
The shop also cuts and prepares meats and seafood for the bistro’s daily dining service right next door. The bistro offers a wide selection of steaks, weekly specials and other menu options.
On Memorial Day weekend, McGregor’s also opened a pop-up sandwich stand featuring the shop’s butcher and bistro products at the Overland Park Farmers Market, which was a rousing success as Mike noted:
“We had been limited to promoting our mall location on social media,” he said. “But at the farmers market, we can sell products and distribute brochures about our butcher shop and bistro to many of the 10,000 people who attend the farmers market each week. The pop-up sandwich shop will continue at the market on Saturdays until mid-November. So many of those customers didn’t know we had a fixed location with both a restaurant and a butcher shop. It’s giving us exposure we didn’t have before.”
McGregor's Butcher & Bistro celebrates its first year of business. (Source: Sosland Publishing Co. / Joel Crews)Family history
Mike is a foodie who likes to dine out. He also is a history buff who traced his family roots to 850 A.D. in the highlands of Scotland.
“It’s really no coincidence that my family has always been farmers and owned cattle,” he said. “Our lineage goes back to the McGregor Clan which has always been about cattle.”
The McGregors were known to be independent, stubborn and great fighters who had a penchant for descending from the highlands at night and “lifting” cattle as a means of survival. After a disagreement with England’s King James VI, the McGregor name was banned.
Recapturing that bit of clan history was clearly behind his naming the new butcher shop and restaurant McGregor’s. The business motif features a six-foot photo of a Scottish castle that sits on land once inhabited by the McGregor Clan. There are also shots of homes, cattle and scenic views of the Scottish highlands.
He confesses that in the realm of Kansas City, many Scottish meals like haggis probably wouldn’t sell. Thus, he puts stock in specialty beef suppliers like Kansas City’s Arrowhead Specialty Meats featuring local product and meats from Greely, Colo., a Wagyu style beef from Austin, Texas, as well as Missouri-based suppliers like Hertzog Meat Co. While pork is a slower mover than the top-quality beef the meat shop offers, he is proud to let customers know McGregor’s offers “the best of the best.” The restaurant also procures what is regarded as top-shelf seafood on its menu and serves items like bourbon chicken and crisp pork belly.
The meat shop features deli sandwiches for takeout and provides meals to-go such as precooked meat loaf, twice-baked potatoes and meat pies. Details on both the bistro menu and meat shop specialties are listed on the website mcgregorsbutcherandbistro.com. Gregg said he recently contracted with an area firm to revamp and update the website, while the company continues to use social media to drive business.
“When I was first considering pairing a butcher shop and bistro, I liked the concept of the Cracker Barrel restaurant chain,” he recalled. “While you wait for your table, there are shelves of foods, snack items and other curios you might want to buy there. We do some of that as well, but we also let the bistro customers know that they can buy the meats and seafood they are enjoying in the restaurant to take home with them and prepare themselves. It’s like one hand washing the other. I think we got the template correct.”
Source: McGregor's Butcher & BistroExperience before expansion
So, what’s next for McGregor’s? Gregg offered his insights:
“We want to get the formula right by being more consistent and efficient first,” he said. “There are things we’re looking at for the future, including the possibility of adding other locations. There’s also the potential for catering and maybe even online sales. But there’s a lot that goes into that and we need to be able to manage first what we already have.
“One important step has been to get knowledgeable and trained management in both the bistro and the butcher shop,” he added. “We have several associates who can work at either end of the business and certainly one can complement the other. On Memorial Day or July 4th holidays, most customers want to buy meat to grill at home for family gatherings. At times like Mother’s Day, they want to enjoy a fine dining experience that is memorable and delicious.
“We’ve also been looking into catering opportunities where we can go to off-premises sites and serve a lot of folks quickly. And then there are smaller events like office parties for the vast number of businesses in our area. I guess you could say we are always on the lookout for opportunities that seem like a good fit.”
Oh, and there’s one other piece of Scottish heritage worth mentioning. McGregor’s makes and sells shortbread cookies. While they rely on a local bakery for many of their bread and cake items, every diner gets a free made-in-house shortbread cookie as a special Scottish treat. Many customers come back and buy the cookies in the butcher shop ... they’re honestly that good.
