Savenor’s Meats Signs on as Official Fenway Park Butcher
(L to R) Savenor’s chef-butcher Colby Bergeron and owner Ron Savenor with a house burger at Savenor’s Cambridge. The butcher shop has signed on with Fenway Park. / Photo by Jacqueline Cain
The Atlanta Braves’ Turner Field can keep its Burgerizza. When it opens for the season on April 11, Fenway Park will be the place to find a burger worth paying stadium prices for this season.
Savenor’s, a local butcher shop that sources meat to chefs like Tony Maws, Barbara Lynch, and Joe Casinelli at restaurants around Boston, is now providing meat to concession areas throughout Fenway Park.
The Cambridge mainstay, in its 76th year of business, is the official butcher and supplier for the ballpark, says Ron Savenor, master butcher, third generation owner, and lifelong Red Sox fan.
The chef-butchers at Savenor’s are supplying the official Fenway caterer Aramark with a homestyle burger patty for every concession stand that doesn’t have a Tasty Burger logo on it, Savenor says. There will also be the company’s marinated sirloin and turkey tips at throughout the ballpark.
Other Savenor’s products will be on the menu at premium amenities like the EMC Club and the luxury suites. Savenor’s will also have a branded concession stand on Yawkey Way, with a rotating menu of signature sandwiches and meats, Savenor says. The butcher shop is also an official Fenway sponsor, he adds.
Last year, Savenor hosted a hamburg tasting for Fenway Park’s senior executive sous chef Ron Abell and executive sous chef Johnny Mulcahey. He explained his company’s process and what makes good hamburg, he says: Savenor’s uses USDA choice and prime ground chuck, and no trim. With retail shops in Beacon Hill and at its production facility in Cambridge, the company is able to use all parts of the animal in grocery items like stock, sausages, and soups, without putting less desirable cuts into its ground beef, he says.
“What makes good hamburg is what you grind. I’ll be blunt about it: You put good stuff in, you get good stuff out,” Savenor says.
At Savenor’s shop, the house burger—a juicy patty made with just beef and butter, seasoned on the outside with black pepper—is served on a Stone & Skillet English muffin with a variety of toppings; on a rainy Saturday in Cambridge, it’s topped with an indulgent, salty pimento cheese with bacon, and spicy house pickles.
At Fenway, Abell and Mulcahey are the creative forces behind the menu items, Savenor says. But the burger itself will be the butter-laden bomb, measured and sliced so it cooks and evenly throughout.
“To Fenway and Aramark’s credit, they’re totally psyched to have a relationship with a local butcher,” Savenor says. “They understand quality of food. They really want to serve the best food money can buy, and they want the image of ballpark food to be as much of an experience as going to the ballpark [itself is], knowing that you can actually get something worthy of what you’re going to pay.”
Savenor’s has about 80 wholesale restaurant clients, Savenor says, like Bergamot, the Butcher Shop, Craigie on Main and its sibling, Savenor’s neighbor Kirkland Tap & Trotter; and Rosebud American Kitchen & Bar. He imagines Fenway will be his biggest account, though he doesn’t have the numbers to show it yet.
He’s also excited about the publicity the prominent position will bring to his own shops. At the Yawkey Way concession stand, sandwiches will be wrapped in paper co-branded with both his logo and the Red Sox B.
“[Fenway Park and Aramark] claim to be so honored to have me join them, but it really goes both ways,” Savenor says.
Fans of baseball and eating well should be happy about the relationship, too.
