Our Story
Ben exchanged the beautiful beaches and sunny hot weather of Sydney, Australia for rainy days and grey skies of Vancouver, BC a little over a decade ago. Around the same time, in 2013, I, Jesse, had spent five years in Montreal, finished a BA and had been working in Communications in Calgary when I decided to pursue a life long dream of making a career out of my sewing hobby and I moved to Vancouver for a design program. I had no intention of staying in Vancouver past finishing my design program and I certainly didn’t intend on meeting a nice Jewish boy from Australia and building a life here with him but that’s exactly what happened one night, in a cozy BBQ joint, on Denman St.
Many who have lived in the West End in the past decade will remember Buck Stop BBQ. It was open late with great food, great drinks and a great community entirely built by its owner Fiona. I was fortunate enough to call her a friend and so was Ben who worked for her a bit at Buck Stop, eventually becoming the chef at Grotto, her Italian restaurant on Davie St., for two years. It was during his time at Grotto, when I had a break from building costumes on a TV show I’d been working on, that I rolled into Buck Stop late one night and was still there when Ben finished work and came in. He was kind and easy to talk to right away. It turned out we lived across the street from each other so we stayed up chatting, I invited myself to a show he was going to, we spent lots of time together that week and now, 7 years, one pandemic and two kids later we’re still in the West End looking to build a life for our kids.
When Fiona sold Grotto Ben moved on to butchery. He started in the deli at Pete’s Meat, apprenticed under his first manager Katie, eventually becoming the shop manager himself for three years. When the pandemic, maternity leave and an extended strike in the film industry made my career building costumes in film and TV too unstable to support our family I began to apprentice as a butcher under Ben with an eye toward us eventually having a shop of our own. Late 2025 we were fortunate enough to find this little spot on Davie St. and we are so excited to be serving the community we met and are raising our kids in.
Our mission with the West End Butcher & Deli is to provide our customers with high quality, BC sourced meats and produce that won’t break the bank. We want to offer something truly unique in the West End, a place where you can come get custom cut, fresh meats from an experienced butcher who knows the products. Someone who can guide you from what cut to buy, to the best recipes for each cut. We know what it’s like to contend with the high cost of raising a family in Vancouver and we’re all too familiar with bloated grocery bills that make you wonder if you can even afford good food for your family. We want our customers to know they can shop on any budget and will get really good products. We will have a range of fresh meats and poultry and house made specialty sausages. We’ll have homemade soups, stews and stocks if you need something quick to heat up on week nights and anything that’s not cut, made and packaged by us directly is made by another BC or Canadian owned independent business. Ben spent his years in butchery creating relationships with independent producers across Canada and we will be bringing you the tastiest morsels Canadian food producers have to offer. We can’t wait to serve you and we hope you’ll come eat with us.
Ben & Jesse
