17 OCTOBER 26-NOVEMBER 1, 2023 westword.com WESTWORD | CONTENTS | LETTERS | NIGHT+DAY | CULTURE | CAFE | MUSIC | Meat and Greet OLIVER’S HAS BEEN KEEPING IT AUTHENTIC FOR 100 YEARS. BY JOHN SULLIVAN You can’t miss the neon sign in the window on East Sixth Avenue at Williams Street: “Oliver’s Meats,” it announces in fl uorescent orange and blue. Step inside the red door under a plac- ard depicting a smiling butcher, and it’s immediately apparent that this is not the sanitized, bleach-drenched meat counter of a supermarket. First of all, Oliver’s Meats smells like meat. The shop’s dry-aged beef lends a pleasant fragrance to the place, like leather and candle wax. Look a little further: Inside the glass counters, various steaks and chops and roasts are stacked on kelly-green paper, a stark con- trast to the fat-marbled red fl esh. Chicken breasts and pork cutlets are likewise splayed on the same paper, lined up like playing cards on stainless-steel trays. Those pea-colored sheets stand in for the soggy pads and shrink- wrapped Styrofoam plates used by major grocery chains. Another difference: Few items are pre- packaged. Unlike the take-it-or-leave-it dis- plays in the meat aisles of big-block stores, Oliver’s takes a customized approach. Cli- ents tell the shop’s meat cutters what they want and how they want it. Once trimmed, deboned, fi lleted or ground, each order is wrapped in white paper and bound with gum labels bearing the friendly-butcher logo. It’s the way the family-owned and -operated store has been doing business for the last hundred years — not so much a throwback as a continuum of tradition that spans four generations. On a recent Sunday afternoon, Rich Oli- ver stood behind the counter with his wife, Michelle, and an assistant. The three traded quips among themselves and with custom- ers who had stopped by to get provisions for the night’s meal. The camaraderie between the staff and patrons bears witness to a retail style that harks back to 1923, the year Rich’s great-grandfather, Ed Oliver, fi rst sold his butcher’s wares from a storefront on Sixth Avenue and Pearl Street, when electric streetcars rumbled down the thoroughfare’s tracks and horse-drawn milk and ice wagons were not an unusual sight. Ed moved Oliver’s Market (as it’s also known) to Sixth and Marion in 1939, pass- ing the business on to his son, Dick, while continuing to work until he was 97. Dick managed the store for decades with his son, Barry, who carried on after Dick passed away. (Photos on the store’s white walls docu- ment the Oliver family history.) Two of Barry’s sons, Rich and Jim, have worked in the store since the 1970s, taking over the business in the late 1980s, mov- ing the store a few blocks east to its present location on Sixth Avenue between Gilpin and Williams in 2005, and work- ing alongside their dad until he retired. (Barry died in 2013.) True confession: I worked at Oliver’s as a teen in the 1970s. Back then, the sawdust- covered wooden fl oors of the Marion Street location creaked rhythmically as a half-dozen meat cutters fi lled orders with effi cient ease. On Saturdays, the shop pulsed with activity from early morning till closing at 6 p.m. I was just a part-time cleanup kid, scrubbing display pans, wiping down stainless equipment, sweeping floors and hauling buckets of trim- mings and bones to the big tubs in the back room destined for the rendering factories of Denver’s industrial north side. But as I observed the men at work, I learned the art of retail shmoozing: a give-and-take banter between shopkeeper and customer. (I later employed that conversational style with dif- fi cult subjects I interviewed in my career as a journalist.) But chatting up customers is not the only distinguishing factor in Oliver’s longevity. According to Jim, clients come for the qual- ity of the goods as well as the personalized service offered by himself, his brother Rich and their three employees. Although “qual- ity and service” sounds like a stock phrase, Jim insists that it’s a bedrock principle. “We keep our quality high by working with our long-term suppliers,” he explains, noting that most of the shop’s meat — beef, veal, lamb, pork and chicken — comes from Colorado and Nebraska producers. Fish and seafood, both fresh and frozen, are sourced from trusted suppliers on both coasts. When customers want something special — say, fresh lobster or crab — Oliver’s can get it on short notice. Jim speaks with particular pride about Oliver’s sausage varieties — more than forty in all, from German and Italian to Cajun and Mediterranean-inspired fl avors — most of them housemade from the store’s original recipes. Those offerings have fi lled the gap in demand for locally crafted links after the clo- sure of other meat markets and delicatessens. Since the early 2000s, Oliver’s has also expanded its line of dairy products to include imported hard and soft cheeses, along with a number of specialty foods like olive oils, pasta sauces, condiments and other meat- complementary goods. “To keep up with demand,” Jim says, “we’ve had to adapt to changing times.” He adds that Oliver’s has always had a grocery component, including when it was associated with the now-defunct Fruit Basket at the Marion Street location. (That storefront is now a pho restaurant.) For Denver’s family-owned small busi- nesses, survival in changing times has never been a sure thing, particularly in the past fi ve years. According to a study by Guidant Financial, small businesses face an array of challenges, from overhead costs (rent, worker pay) to diffi culty in hiring and retain- ing qualifi ed staff. The Guidant report notes that only 65 percent of small businesses in its survey are profi table. COVID shutdowns also took a toll, nationwide as well as in Denver, where the downturn in foot traffi c meant numerous small-business closures, particularly in downtown areas. But Oliver’s has soldiered on, despite the pandemic’s trials. Jim reports that his store never closed for a single day, and it did not take any federal aid via the Paycheck Pro- tection Program. “We were super busy,” he recalls, explaining that with all the restaurant closures, “people were cooking more at home.” Long-term, that has given the shop a boost in return customers, who like the store’s attention to individual service and its Colorado-centric products. As Denver morphs into an outsized it- eration of itself, many of its longstanding businesses have succumbed to development pressures, high rents and staffi ng shortages. Ohle’s Delicatessen and Vollmer’s Bakery, side-by-side fi xtures from the last century on East Colfax and Humboldt Street, didn’t make it to the millennium; Duffy’s Shamrock Bar and Restaurant closed in 2006 after more than fi fty years on Court Place; Bonnie Brae Tavern and its neighbor across South Univer- sity Boulevard, the Saucy Noodle, shuttered in 2022 after decades in the hood. Fran- chises — fast-food eyesores, colorless bank branches, nondescript drugstores — have in many cases fi lled the void, substituting cookie-cutter architecture and chain-trained employees for the funky appeal of home- grown establishments. Bucking this dreary trend, Oliver’s contin- ues its march into the future with a spunky resolve. While Rich and Jim’s offspring have not stepped up to take over for them — so far, at least — the fourth-generation owners, who are now in their sixties, have no plans to retire anytime soon. “We’ll just keep work- ing, doing what we do the best way we can,” Jim says. That means offering high-quality locally sourced products and a customer-fi rst ethos. It also involves being authentic — or, as Jim puts it, “Sticking to what you know and not being something you’re not.” With Oliver’s entering its second century, that’s as time-honored a business plan as any. Oliver’s Meat & Seafood Market is located at 1718 East Sixth Avenue and is open from 8 a.m. to 7 p.m. Monday through Friday, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Saturday and 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. Sun- day. Learn more at oliversmeatmarketllc.com. CAFE FIND MORE FOOD & DRINK COVERAGE AT WESTWORD.COM/RESTAURANTS OIiver’s moved into its current space in 2005. MOLLY MARTIN
