Brent and Jennifer’s Journey with Butcher & Bean
Words and photos by Ambar Ramirez
One often hears the saying, home is where the heart is, but for Jennifer Civitillo and Brent Burgoyne, home is where an espresso bar and a craft butchery collide — Butcher & Bean. This neighborhood market, nestled in St. Augustine, isn’t your typical “chicken & waffles” odd pairing; (bias incoming) it’s better.
“Our story meets what we do. The concept originally was that I just wanted to help him open up his own meat market, but the more I thought about it, I didn’t want to stop doing what I love,” Civitillo recalled. “We actually met in an Italian market up north, and up there they had an espresso machine in the meat market, so it wasn’t so uncommon. We combined our crafts and made something out of it.”
Eleven years ago, when then-barista Civitillo walked into an Italian market up north, she found then-butcher Burgoyne behind the counter — it was as if some fate-driven wheel had already been set in motion. In fact, their story goes back further … to about 20 years ago when Civitillo was 17 with a dream to work at Starbucks.
“When I was 17, right out of high school, I begged the manager of the local Starbucks to let me work there cause you were supposed to be 18 and I was like, ‘My birthday’s in, like, two months, please let me work here.’ It was my spot, back then, Starbucks was a cafe, you know? A little bit less corporate and a little bit more like that was your spot. They wanted it to be a place that felt like home. And it did,” Civitillo shared. “I lost my grandma when I was 16, and the first place I went to was Starbucks because, like, my people were there. And so I always had that connection with baristas, and I guess I just loved drinking coffee.”
Whether it was big moves, music school or having children, Civitillo always found herself back at Starbucks. This cycle went on for a few years until she moved back down to St. Augustine, working at a local spot for four years. That’s when she realized the allure of being a barista wasn’t in the complexity of ingredients or the rush of orders — it was always about the richness of the coffee and the connections with her customers.
“I really did just love the connection that you can have either behind the bar or behind the counter. It’s my favorite part of this,” Civitillo said. “I’ve always liked the smaller, more intimate, less corporate kind of thing. It was always about the coffee, always. Like when I was working at Starbucks, I hated making those frappuccinos with like 75 different ingredients. I don’t know if it comes from my grandma, she always had a pot of coffee on, and she would drink it all day. I find myself doing that now.”
And how wherever there was coffee, there was Civitillo; wherever there was crafted meat, there was Burgoyne. Across the street from Burgoyne’s childhood home (and farm) was his grandfather’s butcher shop. Needless to say, butchering to Burgoyne was like what butter is to bread. It just makes sense. Still, Burgoyne didn’t take butchering lightly, it was more than just something he did with his grandfather; it became his passion.
Burgoyne worked his way up from helping his grandfather to working at the Italian market where he met Civitillo to working in Connecticut for 11 years and then back to Florida where he became head meat cutter at a local butcher shop in St. Augustine. It was one of those right time, right place situations, especially because not too far from where Burgoyne was slicing Italian meats, the space that now holds Butcher & Bean was put on the market. Burgoyne immediately knew this space would be the place where both their dreams would come true.
“We ended up meeting the owner of the property and just things fell into place organically,’ Burgoyne shared. “And ever since then, it’s been like a gradual organic growth too, which is awesome. We don’t have to advertise, and I don’t mean that as a cocky thing, I mean that in a humbling way; the people do it for us. The community talks and everybody just loves our stuff. But the goal that I’ve always had, and I’ve been a butcher for now 22 years so a long time, my goal has always been to provide the best service and the best product.”
Butcher and Bean was born with a vision to not only provide top-of-the-line meats and freshly sourced coffee, it was also born with a vision of creating a space for the community. As Civitillo would put it, they wanted Butcher and Bean to be your spot. Funnily enough, this core value of this market was why they almost called the business “Southside Meating Place.” But Butcher and Bean ultimately made more sense.
“We also wanted to create a really approachable place to go. And it’s a unique idea for us because like most of the time, you don’t have a grocer that has an espresso machine at the checkout counter. People can come down and shop around, and it’s a new experience to try and make it as community-driven as possible,” Burgoyne said. “We just wanted to give people a space to really talk, you know, talk, ask questions, feel comfortable to ask questions. And I would say that our one-year anniversary was kind of like a testament to everything. We had like a huge turnout, and it was incredible. We walked out front and were blown away. It was just a sea of people. Another one of my all-time favorite things is when people come in and they’re like, ‘Oh, my God, I haven’t seen you in years. How are you doing?,’ ‘How’s the baby?’ stuff like that is huge,” Civitillo added.
Knowing the names of each guest that walks in, being eager to answer any questions about coffee roasts and types of meats and being a small shop where old friends reconnect, are just a few ways that Butcher and Bean has succeeded in being a spot for the community. And not only is this evident in their demeanor, but it is evident in their product.
“The word that kept coming up whenever we started was everything was intentional. The colors are intentional, the seating is intentional, the products, everything in here has a purpose and we feel good about it. We believe in it and we wanted to serve it right,” Civitillo shared. “So I’m kind of like a less is more kind of person. All the syrups are made from organic cane sugar, filtered water and then flavored extract and even like this time of year I have a sweet potato latte so it’s like pumpkin spice, but it’s better because it’s made with pumpkin, maple syrup, real sweet potatoes and cinnamon spices. I like less is more and so that’s the premise of kind of a lot of the things that we have here as far as the butchery side too. And then all the coffee comes locally roasted from Jacksonville. So we get it delivered once every other week and that’s from Flamingo Coffee Dispensary. We had a very distinct image of what I wanted to serve and it’s something that I felt wasn’t in the market already. My style is a little bit like a heavier roast. I like the darker side of coffee’s more chocolatey-like. And my thing is, I want people to know that they’re drinking coffee, not that they’re drinking like flavored milk. Everything has a double shot. That’s why we call ourselves an espresso cafe. I love the taste of just black coffee. But the experience that you have that comes with it, either preparing it for yourself, preparing it for somebody else, the relationships that you can form with people over it. And my favorite thing probably in the world is when somebody takes a sip of coffee and they kind of like, stop for a second, they’re like, ‘Oh, that’s good.’ I call it that first sip feeling.”
While “Bean” keeps things simple and warm, the butcher side of the market keeps things exciting and fresh. Like the rest of this market, everything is intentionally balanced.
“We try and source everything as locally as possible. Obviously it’s not always going to be local, but the things that are not local are still very, very high quality — antibiotic-free, no added hormones, pasture-raised, all that good stuff. We carry grass-fed, grain-fed, we carry local chicken and we make all of our sausage rolls in-house. So we take it seriously when it comes to, like, getting the best for people for the best price as well,” Burgoyne shared. “To get a little bit further in detail, we do like 8 to 10 different types of sausage here. So we make, like, everything in-house and that’s unique for this area because sausage is one of those practice-’til-you-perfect techniques, and it’s taken years and years of practice to make it this good. But we love it and we do some really cool flavors. We have a blueberry sage and maple, we do roasted garlic and parmesan, mild spicy and all the normal flavors, and we do Datil. Obviously we are in St. Augustine so we have to have that.”
Opening up Butcher and Bean didn’t come without its hardships. Just imagine what it was like to get business licenses for a place that works with raw meat and fresh coffee beans. But Burgoyne and Civitillo are hard workers at their core, and there was no way around the fact that this market was intertwined with their fate. And you don’t have to take my word for it, in just one year, Butcher and Bean has truly made a name for itself in St. Augustine
“We know that we could have an idea and believe in it. But if the community doesn’t receive it, and if they don’t want it, then it’s not going to be successful. So the fact that so many people have come in and seen our vision and then chose to return and continue to share kind of like our dream with us is, it’s an indescribable feeling because it’s not just about us,” Civitillo said. “You know we are serving food, things that they’re putting into their body, which is a very kind of intimate thing, you know. And so to have this stretch where people come back and come to you and say, ‘Thank you, thank you for being here,’ We’re like, ‘No, thank you for being here because without you there is no us.’ And that’s always that’s the foundation: We just want people to be happy.”
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