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Key results

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• 300+ subscribers across the greater Seattle area, with the club consistently growing
• Two-tiered butcher box (The Little Beast at $135 and The Big Beast at $195) built around whole-animal utilization
• 90-minute delivery keeps fresh, locally sourced meat cold from shop to doorstep
• Expanded geographic reach, serving neighborhoods and suburbs that couldn't regularly make the trip to Ballard

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The English butcher of Ballard

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Kevin Smith grew up in South East London, where he developed an early appreciation for whole-animal butchery and the craft of turning every part of an animal into something worth eating. After honing his skills at Rain Shadow Meats and The Butcher's Table in Seattle, he and his wife Polly opened Beast & Cleaver on New Year's Eve 2019 in the city's Ballard neighborhood.

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The shop was built on clear conviction: source whole animals from local farms, break them down in-house, and find a use for every single piece. The offerings at Beast & Cleaver reflect that commitment; beyond the steaks and chops, you'll find house-made sausages, terrines, pâté en croûte, and offal preparations. Kevin is as much a chef as he is a butcher, and he sees the two as inseparable.

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"Without truly understanding the anatomy of an animal, its muscle structure, and how different parts of the animal cook at different times and temperatures, you will never be able to cook to your full potential."

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— Kevin Smith, Butcher & Co-Owner, Beast & Cleaver

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That philosophy has earned recognition from The Seattle Times, Eater, The Infatuation, and Seattle Met, and Kevin was named a James Beard Foundation semifinalist for Emerging Chef in 2023. And while the accolades are certainly nice, what drives the shop day to day is the sourcing. Beast & Cleaver pulls over 90% of its products from the Pacific Northwest, partnering with farms that prioritize heritage breeds, sustainable animal husbandry, and regenerative practices. Kevin knows the age of every animal that comes through his door, what it was eating, and when it was harvested.

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Too far from the butcher case

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Beast & Cleaver built a loyal following in Ballard quickly, but that loyalty had a geographic ceiling. Customers in further-flung Seattle neighborhoods and the suburbs loved the quality and the care that went into every cut, but getting to the shop regularly was a problem.

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"We've been getting people who are too far away to come in and get the really good meat that we have. People wanting to reach out, like, can you deliver to us? And we were like, no, we don't even know how to do that."

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— Kevin Smith

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The demand was there, but the infrastructure to meet it wasn't. Kevin and Polly needed a way to extend what they were doing behind the case to kitchens across the greater Seattle area, without compromising on the sourcing and quality standards that set them apart.

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Feeding 300 households for a week

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Working with Table22, Beast & Cleaver launched a butcher box subscription designed around the same whole-animal philosophy that defines the shop. Two tiers give members flexibility: The Little Beast ($135) delivers 5-6 pounds of meaty goodness, enough for roughly four to six meals for two people, while The Big Beast ($195) delivers 8-9 pounds for families or more ambitious home cooks.

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Each box is curated from Beast & Cleaver's whole-animal program, which means members receive a rotating selection of cuts they won't find hardly anywhere else. That's by design.

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"The selection of cuts they get is not what they're going to find in the supermarket. They're really happy with the amount of food that is in there. We try and make that good value."

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— Kevin Smith

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Members can customize further with add-ons like an extra pound of ground beef or ground pork, and a choice of house-made sausage links, from garlicky Cumberland to Toulouse, Italian, and a Red Wine & Garlic blend. It's the kind of flexibility that turns a monthly delivery into a week's worth of meals.

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Table22 handles billing, customer communications, and delivery logistics, including cold-box fulfillment that gets fresh meat to doorsteps within 90 minutes.

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"Table22 is really easy to work with. You guys offer delivery within like 90 minutes, and that creates a lot of trust for the customers. It's fresh meat going out, getting to them within 90 minutes. That's huge."

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— Kevin Smith, Butcher & Co-Owner, Beast & Cleaver

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The delivery details matter, too. With 300-plus subscribers, each with specific instructions (leave it on the doorstep, don't leave it on the doorstep), the platform keeps every order personalized, something Kevin's team couldn't have managed on their own.

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From production space to a brand new pub

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As the subscription grew, the volume of whole-animal breakdowns outpaced what the Ballard shop could handle, and Kevin needed to rent a dedicated production facility. Once the space was up and running, he and Polly realized it had all the bones of a fully operable restaurant, so they opened Little Beast, their English pub on Ballard Avenue, in summer 2025.

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Now the butcher boxes and the restaurant run as two parts of the same circle, with each feeding the other. Cuts that move quickly through the subscription help balance the utilization equation for the whole animal, and what doesn't go into the boxes fuels the creative menu at Little Beast or gets transformed into the charcuterie and sausages that fill the retail case. Predictable demand from subscribers makes purchasing decisions more confident and waste less likely.

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"The production of the whole animal breakdown for the butcher boxes is now folded into running the restaurant, so it's like a big circle. I feel like we've got the circle rolling. It's got a few little chinks in it, but another year and it'll be totally smooth."

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— Kevin Smith

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What you can't get anywhere else

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Kevin is focused on growth. He wants to bring a few more subscribers into the fold to better match the volume of animals he's purchasing, and he's eager to expand the selection, especially introducing more lamb, a cut close to his English roots that he thinks the Seattle market is ready for.

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His advice to other operators thinking about starting a club is characteristically direct: "Do it. Figure out your logistics, figure out what you need to do, and do it. It's very rewarding knowing that people are getting your product." He adds what feels like the thesis of the whole operation: "I view it as an extension of giving people things that they can't get anywhere else."

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For Beast & Cleaver, the butcher box has become exactly that. An extension of the shop's craft, its sourcing standards, and its belief that local, sustainable, whole-animal meat should be accessible beyond the four walls of a Ballard storefront.

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