Whole-Cow Butcher Shop Carves Into Lafayette Square's Fire-Scarred Malt House

A new butcher shop is about to start carving up whole sides of Missouri beef inside one of St. Louis's most storied 19th-century buildings. The Malt House Butcher, owned by first-time business owner Sam Rice, is set to open at the beginning of September just outside Lafayette Square, taking over space in the former Vin de Set building at 2017 Chouteau Ave.

Rice is building his business around cut-to-order halves and quarters of beef rather than a traditional retail meat counter, according to Sauce Magazine. Customers can already place orders, and Rice expects to begin fulfilling them roughly three weeks after each order comes in once the shop opens for business in September. He's also open to working with customers who supply their own meat from their own farms or farmer relationships, per the same report.

The shop will lean on seam butchery, a fabrication method that separates whole-animal muscles along their natural anatomical seams instead of sawing straight across bone. According to the Agriculture and Horticulture Development Board, the technique demands skilled manual knife work to pull apart individual muscle groups, and it maximizes carcass yield compared to sawing through bone. That extra labor shows up in the numbers: under this model, ground beef makes up only about 35% of a customer's final take-home cuts, compared to more than half in commercial processing plants, the Sauce Magazine report notes.

Filet, Bavette and a Cut List Rice Says Can't Be Beat

Sam Rice has years of butchery experience behind him, having worked at both Bolyard's Meat and Provisions and Wenneman Meat Co. before striking out on his own, per the same account. Bolyard's, a Maplewood shop that helped pioneer whole-animal craft butchery in the region, expanded into a 4,200-square-foot space in 2021 after building a following for whole-animal fabrication and diner seating, according to KSDK.

Rice's cut list at The Malt House Butcher will include filet mignon, flat-iron steaks, ranch steak and bavette, with each cow's cuts customized to what individual customers request. “Find someone who is offering a more extensive cut list than I am,” Rice said, according to Sauce Magazine. A side of beef through the shop weighs over 200 pounds, and according to USDA statistics cited in the same report, a side that size can feed a family of four for about a year.

A Family Trade Passed Down From Wisconsin

Rice traces his own roots in the trade to Weber Meats, a family meat-processing business in Cuba City, Wisconsin, that has operated for more than 120 years, according to The Malt House Butcher. That lineage appears to be part of what's driving him now. “I think it's in my blood to do this,” Rice said, per Sauce Magazine.

All of the beef sold through the shop will be sourced locally, with Price Family Farms of Troy, Missouri supplying cuts, the report states. Price Family Farms has operated a pasture-based Angus cattle operation in Lincoln County since 2000, raising beef without added hormones or antibiotics and relying on subdivided pasture paddocks for forage management, according to its farm listing. That local sourcing plugs directly into a much larger picture: Missouri ranks third nationally in total beef cows, according to the Missouri Department of Agriculture, with a statewide herd estimated between 1.8 million and 2 million head spread across roughly 60,000 farms generating close to $2 billion in annual farm sales.

Slow Growth by Design, Inside a Rebuilt Landmark

Rice says he's deliberately keeping the business small for now, planning to serve several wholesale accounts alongside direct customer orders while he grows incrementally rather than rushing into a storefront. “I want to incrementally grow on purpose,” he told Sauce Magazine. He has a long-term goal of eventually opening a full retail shop, but says he wants to build customer connections first and prioritize employee welfare — good pay, benefits and a healthy work environment — before expanding further, per the same report.

The Malt House Butcher is currently under construction inside a building with a complicated recent history. The property, known as the Centennial Malt House, was built in 1876 for Joseph Schnaider's Chouteau Avenue Brewery and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in November 2005, according to a National Park Service finding aid. A rooftop fire in September 2022, caused by a cigarette extinguished in a planter on the rooftop deck, sent water damage cascading through multiple floors and forced the permanent closure of longtime tenants Vin de Set, PW Pizza and 21st Street Brewers Bar the following March, according to KSDK.

Developers Cally and Rich Conyers subsequently redeveloped the building into 13 residential apartments alongside new commercial tenants, including seafood restaurant Extra Wavy and speakeasy-style cocktail lounge Prohibition, both of which opened in late 2025. The Malt House Butcher will now join those two concepts inside the rebuilt Centennial Malt House, rounding out a mixed-use hub just outside Lafayette Square that has slowly come back to life after years of fire remediation.