Assuming you were a carnivore like me, would you eat meat that looks and tastes this good? In my case, I did, and miss the option to buy it direct from the butcher. Unfortunately, the Applestone meat company recently closed down all of its outlets - shortly after they opened their first Westchester county outlet in Eastchester, NY.
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When I was dating XGFJ, one of the places we'd pass in her neighborhood was the Applestone Meat Company outlet. There were times that she wanted to buy a good steak (or roast), and didn't want to go to the local supermarket or drive into Kingston or to New Paltz. I've eaten Applestone's meat, and was willing to drive to either of their first two storefronts during the early days of the pandemic. (In those early days, no one knew how to be safe. So any place one could shop for food with minimal human contact was a blessing - especially when the meat was this good.) Later on, I found out that they were opening an Eastchester store, but didn't have the chance to get there before this place closed down.
Years ago, many supermarkets butchered their meats on site. In the past few years, it became cheaper to butcher meats elsewhere and deliver butchered, wrapped meat directly to stores. (Some stores kept butchering tools in the stores, so that larger cuts of meat could be sliced down into manageable units for consumer use.) If you were to go to a Walmart, Aldi or Trader Joe's, all you'd find are prepackaged meats - it's much cheaper and more hygienic to butcher the meats in a central location and deliver them to stores.
In Japan, they sell almost everything in vending machines, including clothing. In Germany, they have sausage vending machines (shown above). So why shouldn't Americans take the next step and sell freshly butchered meat out of vending machines?
Applestone did so. Sadly, it didn't work out for them. Knowing what I know about their former product, the meat was expensive - but very good. If I wanted to cook a true gourmet meal, and wasn't satisfied with the quality of meat from my local supermarket, I'd have gone to Applestone. This is one shopping option that I'll miss, even though I hardly had the chance to use it.
PS: Would you have patronized the BAMN! Automat?. What about the Brooklyn Dumpling Shop?
