Bourgeois Meat Market, popular for tasty beef jerky and other Cajun delights, is expanding
Bourgeois Meat Market, a butcher shop that started in the times of horse-and-carriage, plans to open a second location in Gray early next year.
The more-than-100-year-old local institution is popular for its highly touted beef jerky, along with its boudin, hog's head cheese and other Cajun offerings.
It will continue to operate its current butcher shop, along Bayou Terrebonne at 543 West Main St. in Schriever, said fourth-generation owner Beau Bourgeois.
And the second location, under construction at 3700 West Park Ave., will give the business more room to grow.
The new location was planned to be completed two years ago, but the COVID pandemic and Hurricane Ida delayed the process.
"It's terrible timing, but we've kind of outgrown this place," Bourgeois, 35, said.
At about 9,000 square feet, the new location is roughly twice the size of the current shop.
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Founded in 1891, the business began in Valery Jean Baptiste Bourgeois' front yard.
"He started off by slaughtering a cow or a pig and going by horse and carriage house-to-house. That was the days before refrigeration," Beau Bourgeois said. "Later on, he eventually built a little smokehouse. ... The whole reason they started doing that was so that you could keep the fresh sausage a couple of extra days."
The first building was on the opposite side of the street from where it is now. It moved to its current home on the bayouside after Valery Bourgeois returned from military service in World War II, and the former building was later demolished.
After adding onto the location numerous times, the current site is inefficient due to the layout, Beau Bourgeois said.
"It's not nearly as efficient as it could be," he said. "For instance, there's not enough space to stuff sausage and boudin at the same time."
Because areas were added as needed, employees have to walk through kitchens and smokers to get from one end of the building to the other. The new location will solve those problems as well as expand the customer receiving area.
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Bourgeois said the additional space will allow for more services, including a spot where customers can quickly pick up specialty items like stuffed meats and daily plate lunches.
The current site has 30 employees working at any given time, and Bourgeois said the plan is to spread the workers between the two locations. For the new site, he said, he has to hire about 30 new employees.
"I'm actually really excited about it," said employee Connor Finn, 32, of Gretna, who is looking forward to the extra space. "You've got the production kitchen, then the service kitchen, and you also have the slicing room."
Bourgeois has made a name for itself with its beef jerky, which has been praised as some of the best by several publications over the years. In 2008, Garden & Gun magazine named it among "100 Southern Foods You Absolutely, Positively Must Try Before You Die."
Jake Heigl, a sales representative for Wellbore Integrity Solutions, said the jerky and hog's head cheese he buys from Bourgeois Meat Market are great help in his line of work. And since he lives in Houma, the new location means a shorter drive to pick them up.
Heigl's customers out of Covington and New Orleans have never had Bourgeois' products, and bringing them to meetings really excites them.
"It's actually my little secret; they love it," he said, lifting a package of beef jerky. "New Orleans and Covington is where most of my big customers are, so they don't know about the stuff down here. They don't have it over there, so it's new."
This article originally appeared on The Courier: Schriever's Bourgeois Meat Market is expanding to Gray
