June Update

You know it’s been a productive month when a June update comes halfway through July! Here’s what happened last month.

Location

The biggest news is that we announced our location! We will take over the Salt & Time space at 1912 E 7th Street. The community response has been positive; there’s a lot of love for Salt & Time and folks are glad that their philosophy will be upheld and extended by Radius when we open. Lots of good local press coverage too — Austin Statesman, Austin Business Journal, My San Antonio, KVUE, Eater Austin, and a bunch more. 

We expect demolition to start in late July and construction a month or so later. Still hoping to be open by the end of this year and we’ll certainly share updates as construction progresses.

Architecture and Brand Design

Architecture projects have three design phases — Schematic Design, Design Development, and Construction Documents. Schematic design defines the floor plan and we finished that phase in May; you can read about our floor plan decisions in last month’s update. In June we pushed to finish design development documents so we could get bids from general contractors. Design development starts the process to transform a 2D floor plan into 3D space. Finishes are selected, furniture is designed, fixtures and equipment finalized. 

The Michael Hsu team has done a wonderful job shepherding this process, pushing us where we needed to be pushed while balancing our feedback and business needs. We genuinely love working with our architecture and brand team (thank you Chet, Anna, Amanda, Erin, Arielle!). In our first design development meeting, they pulled a fast one on us though. The 3D renderings that Joe and I had become familiar with over the first few months of the project were tossed aside and the team suggested a completely different design aesthetic. After going through all the stages of grief in that meeting, we now love the new feel. Here are the before and after renderings.

While the former design is certainly beautiful, it’s too current. White oak, bright finishes, white walls. It could exist in any city today, and there are certainly many retail businesses in Austin that have this aesthetic. The current design is more Radius, and we hope more timeless. Dark wood (likely Texas mesquite!), patina-ed metal, imagery from our farm partners, and tile as an homage to classic butcher shops. This design is still evolving, but we’re super excited about this direction. 

Sourcing

Our sourcing efforts and farm visits continue! We’ve learned a ton over the past few months about Texas growing conditions, and will start to select farms for each category soon. Farm visit highlights from June were Behind the Oaks and Trosi. 

Behind the Oaks practices regenerative agriculture in Schertz, Texas just outside of San Antonio. They raise grass-fed beef, pasture-raised chickens, turkeys, and collect eggs. During Joe’s visit to Behind the Oaks, they talked about the differences between Cornish Cross and Color Yield (a type of Freedom Ranger) chickens, and how much more adventurous and animal-like the Color Yields are. You can see cows walking behind the chicken coop too; mixed-use regenerative ag at work! You can feel how much Zach and his family revere the animals and land that they steward. 

Trosi Farms is the creative farm that supports Emmer & Rye Hospitality Group. William practices Korean natural farming, an organic agricultural method that uses microorganisms (bacteria, fungi, nematodes, and protozoa) to produce rich soil and high yields without chemicals. William believes that a healthy soil microbiome leads to healthy plants, and healthy plants lead to nutritious and delicious fruits and vegetables. Trosi grows all sorts of fruit and vegetable varieties at the farm in Elgin and the orchard in Waller.

Both Behind the Oaks and Trosi care deeply about the food system; these are the folks we are so excited and honored to work with.

Team

Joe spent two weeks in June staging at iconic butcher shops in New York! Dickson’s is the wonderful shop inside of Chelsea Market and Ends Meat is an incredible butcher shop and salumeria in Industry City. At Dickson’s, Joe practiced rail breaking — taking huge beef eighths, hooking them on the rail, and breaking them down into subprimals before turning them into retail cuts. Radius will use the former Salt & Time rail system which makes it much easier to bring in whole animals and break them down. 

At Ends Meat, Joe spent time with his good friend John to help out around the shop and experiment with different charcuterie techniques. Charcuterie is an essential component to whole animal utilization, and John is one of the most skilled and creative charcutieres that we know of.

Staging is a great part of the food service ecosystem for folks to pick up skills, learn from different environments, and pay it forward. We’re excited to host people for stages once the shop opens up!

Speaking of hosting new people — we’re actively hiring. We have job openings for a category and data director, butchers, and associates. If you or anyone you know might be interested in a role, reach out to jobs@eatradius.com.