awful expierence - Smith and Sons Meat Processing, Mt.Pleasant, MI

Plant.One

Plant.One

Well-known member
-5 star review (yes thats less than 0 stars!) for Smith and Sons Meat Processing in Mt.Pleasant Michigan

https://www.facebook.com/pg/Smith-and-Sons-Meat-Processing-Inc-138117192914103/
http://smithandsonsmeatprocessing.com/

This incident happened at 5pm on December 4th, 2019.
Thank you Smith and sons meat processing for showing me your true colors as a "reputable" butchering location.

Im sorry to have to write this, but i had the most awful experience and everyone who even considers using Smith and Sons needs to be aware of whats going on in this business.

I had my deer processed this year at smith and sons. We've been using them for several years now after our long time butcher changed hands. This year the group i hunt with took 7 deer here.


Unfortunately my deer was not processed how i requested - sadly however thats not even what brings me to write this review.


While attempting to address my expectations of what i ordered vs what i received - the management's FIRST serious option to me (after asking if i'd like to return some of my venison!) was to offer me EXTRA venison.

thats right... SOMEONE ELSE's MEAT that i was told was there "in the back" "for making sausage or jerky" and they could "pack some up for me in a few minutes"

#waitwhat ?!?!?!?!?!? #WHAT #THE #ACTUAL #[beeep] ?!?!?!?!?!?

I absolutely refused, along with refusing their offer of some beef jerky sticks and left the building - i adamantly DO NOT condone shorting another customer's product to make up for YOUR mistake in how you wrote my order down.

Thats simply not ethical and shows a level character that i will not be party to.

To whomever's deer i didnt take - i'm sorry that they tried to screw you over to fix their mistake. I hope you get all your meat back that you expected - especially since you're paying extra (by the pound im sure) for sausage and jerky. I'm not that guy and i wont be party with any business who asks me to be THAT guy.

And now i'm forced to wonder if i even received the same venison that i dropped off to have processed.
I'm flabbergasted that this was their solution.
 
Around here there a few people that like to Deer hunt but don't like Deer meat. They give their meat to the butcher to do with as they please.
I have always wondered if you always get back the same as you bring in no matter what it is. How would a person know.
I am sure some butchers would never do anything out of the way but some shops seem so disorganised I wonder if they know themselves who's is what.
I don't know anything about running a butcher shop so I never tried to question. I did tell a butcher that one of his employes was not worth a flip and if it was my shop I would fire him. He laughed and said I know but he's my son.
 
Bummer...
I always get my own meat back. Hard not to when you butcher your own.
cool.gif


My uncle loves the place , only place he will buy beef. He's a picky man,very picky.
 
sadly - we've used them for several years, and up until now.... have loved the service. they package quite nice and are quick. just extremely frustrated as we thought we'd found "our new spot" after having to go searching when the guy we were using passed away and his kid took over and the service there went to pure crap.

but yea... its time to start cutting my own stuff. once i sent the text around to the rest of our huntin group - a couple of the guys who do cut their own just said its time we need to setup a processing space and be done with it in one of the pole-barns in the family.

i talked to the DNR today and they did say that technically smith's didnt do anything illegal by offering me what they did, and that theres no rules guaranteeing that you HAVE to get your meat back. which seems shady as [beeep] to me, and at the very least unethical. he did say that many butchers do offer that as their processing standard, but you as a customer are required to confirm that before dropping your stuff off.
 
Hard to find a good butcher. Used to know a good one here years ago but he retired and I haven't found one I like since. Having a place to process a deer is the biggest hurdle to doing your own. Maybe someday.
 
I have processed my own for a long time, many years. I just talked with a guy today that had a fair sized whitetail done at a local shop and the bill was over $200. We kill 4-6 deer per year. At $200 each, that's a fair chunk of change.
 
Me and buddy just butchered 6 whitetail last week. 2 people skinning then one removing meat and one cleaning and vacuum packing. It took us about an hour each deer.

A deer can be pretty clean to butcher, I just sold my house but for years I would skin them in the garage, remove the head and front legs then carry the rest and hang it in my warm basement and a single piece of news paper was enough to contain the mess. Early bow season the basement would help with bugs and cool the meat but more times than not it would be to let it thaw out.
 
I had a good butcher, a little Mexican market in Corona CA 'Budget King Meats' Gustavo or "Gus"
did excellent work at a very fair price. Their no longer there. He sold it.
 
I’ve done a little of everything, cut my own, given meat away, & had specialty meats processed. If our kids get a deer I’m more inclined to bring it in & have stuff made.

A way to ‘split the baby’ is to do easy cuts at home then bring in a few quarters for processing.

The current rage is to ‘get your own meat back’. O.K., do they only put your meat in then clean before the next batch? What about those smaller requests that need a larger batch to fill the smoker? I think some mixing is inevitable, whether told or not.

Yeah, if you want to know for sure, cut up & process your own.
 
Originally Posted By: muskrat30The current rage is to ‘get your own meat back’. O.K., do they only put your meat in then clean before the next batch? What about those smaller requests that need a larger batch to fill the smoker? I think some mixing is inevitable, whether told or not.

i could totally understand some mixing necessary for specialty processing if you wanted small amounts. no commercial processor is going to make 2 lbs of sausage at a time, or smoke/cure 3 lbs of jerky. their equipment isnt setup for it and the cost associated is so high to individually batch small stuff like that would make the retail price so exorbitant nobody would buy it anyway if they did.

but i think thats also something if being done the butcher should be required to disclose up front so you're aware of it and can make an educated decision.


HOWEVER - if you're just getting your meat cut and packaged - it should be a no brainier to in/out process each animal as their own. thats not a "current thing". im sure that the expectation of EVERYONE dropping an animal off for custom butchering.

i dont think anyone would drop any animal off (deer, cow, pig, etc) and their expectation is "i'm trading this for a box of mystery meat of the same species". if you wanted random meat why buy or raise your own livestock, or harvest a deer... just go to the grocery store right?

because thats what you're suggesting should be/is the norm. not that paying someone to cut & package what YOU brought in and only what you brought in is the standard.


again, while i was irritated that my deer wasnt cut the way i requested it - my issue and the reason for this post is their handling of my trying to address it with them.
 
Understand the problem w/butcher offering to "replace" your meat with some "left over in the back". Once had same offer from a really sad situation.

There was a renowned small butcher shop in a relatively small town that the owner/operator had opened when he came back from serving in the Army in WWII. He did great work, producing some of the best sausage you ever tasted. He finally retired and his son took over the operation in the late '90's. Unfortunately, the son had an affair w/Mary Jane and the business suffered.

First problem I was aware of after the son took over was when I took a buck in to be processed. When I picked it up, received only about 2/3 of what I had come to expect based on many years of X# field dressed in, X# packaged meat. I questioned "Joe" and he assured me that was all there was but offered me some "spare meat from the back". I declined, but had same question, why would he have any spare or left over venison in the first place?

The next hunting season, I took a friend in to drop his deer off and the father was there, trying to help straighten out the mess made by his son. He recognized me and asked if I was there to pick up my deer. I replied no, I had not shot one yet this year. He said he had seen a box in the freezer with my name on it. Sure enough, at the bottom of a very tall stack of boxes, there sat the box missing from last year's buck.

My friend made several trips to pick up his meat and either the shop was closed, or he was advised that it was not ready yet. Shortly thereafter, before my friend got his meat, a newspaper article appeared stating a terrible odor on main street of the city of XXXXXX caused a neighboring business to call the city. The odor was quickly traced to said butcher shop and it was determined that the son had not paid his light bill, the power company cut off power and 10,000# of spoiled meat was left in the cooler.

Regards,
hm
 
Yes, simply cutting up & packaging, should be all your deer.

I think there is a good effort at most to get ‘your meat’.

This year I shot 2 deer, gave them away. The son shot one, had that processed.
 
A couple years ago I called a big company butcher that had a shop locally, I knew they cleaned deer and I wanted 100lbs of deer fat to make soap.

I couldnt believe my eyes when i walked into the back of the shop in the middle of rifle season to pick up the bags of fat, maybe 50 deer and a dozen workers were stuck in a 20x30 foot room, complete chaos and refrigerated semi trailer in back nearly full of deer. And I'm not bashing the butcher for this, they clearly had to hire more people to handle the venison avalanche and work around the clock plus keep the shop running and looking as normal. How experienced is this new help and how motivated are they during the 2 or 3 weeks they're hired to tackle this daunting job of cleaning others deer that have been gut shot, not cleaned after field dressing etc...

I'm sure it's a terrible job and for the average schlubs that gets a deer every 2 or 3 years and doesn't even know where the back straps are located... In the situation I walked into I would probably(definitely) be getting the job done post haste and not worry too much about the 2% of the customers that might notice something not quite right. Most the people that I know that bring a deer to the butcher are only excited for the smoked meat sticks or similar and even with the best venison sticks who knows if that's your deer, someone else's deer or an aardvark.

Not that I think it's ok to give away others meat or run a business like a jackass, but our 1 or 2 precious deer to them is a drop in a bucket when they're fighting to keep their head above water.
 
Blessed to have known a fella for the better part of 30 yrs that cuts at his house to make side money. He's a butcher for Smith's Food King. He's fast, turns out a good product and is reasonably priced but doesn't do any fancy stuff like cased sausages. Last few years he keeps threatening me that he's going to quit. I dead the day. Not many options in Las Vegas, NV.
 
Back
Top