Beach butcher shop hasn't seen recession yet

The words tumble out of Johnny Hardison's mouth machine-gun style, as though they're racing each other to the listener's ear.

"Johnny Earl's sausage, man, wait 'til you taste it," the ebullient manager of the Country Butcher Shop and Deli says. "Tastes so good you'll want to slap Jimmy Dean upside the head. No comparison."

Hardison talks so fast he says people often assume he's "a Northener" instead of a Jacksonville, Fla., native who moved to Virginia Beach some 30 years ago.

"I just get excited. I love what I do."

What Hardison does is meat. He grinds it. Slices it. Chops it. Fillets it.

But most of all, he sells it. At a time when many businesses are struggling through a tough economy, customers continue to stream through the doors of the cozy, seemingly recession-proof chunk of the Virginia Beach Farmers Market. Hardison maintains sales are up 20 percent over the same point last year.

"And I don't see it getting any slower," he said.

Like any good salesman, Hardison raves about the quality and variety of his products, particularly his prized homemade sausage.

"No preservatives, no chemicals," he said. "Compared to what you get in the stores? It's like the difference between freshly baked cookies and Kiebler's."

Still, the customers say the personal touch of Hardison and his staff that also keeps them coming back.

"The people here are like friends to me," said Gene Graeff, a regular ribeye customer.

Today, Hardison merely runs the shop. But on Jan. 1, he'll own it and begin writing his own chapter in the family meat saga.

Hardison's older brother Brad already owns the Village Butcher shop in the West Hilltop Shopping Center. And through the rest of this year, the Country Butcher shop will still belong to patriarch J.T. Hardison, who began starting his meat empire shortly after acquiring his certified butcher's license in the late 1960s.

At his peak Hardison owned three butcher shops across Hampton Roads.

"I've done everything from make hot dogs to running the whole operation,' the elder Hardison said.

Johnny Hardison jumped into the business at age 14 when he bagged groceries and swept floors in one of his father's stores. A few years later, the father taught the son the fine points of cutting meat.

Not all of those lessons sunk in. One time, Hardison sliced off the tip of the index finger on his right hand.

"My mistake, because I was doing it incorrectly," Hardison said. "If you're doing it correctly and you cut yourself, you're just stupid."

The occasional gaffe aside, by age 20 Hardison figured he was ready to run his own store. His father thought otherwise. So Hardison left the family business.

In fact, he left the family.

"We didn't speak for about five years," said Hardison, who found work as an apprentice meat cutter in one of the local grocery store chains.

The Hardisons finally reconnected by striking a deal - the son agreed to return to the business; the father agreed to sell it to the son after five years.

The two still butt heads on occasion. J.T. Hardison says he's fired his son about three times.

"Of course, I always hired him back," he said. "He's hard-headed, but he knows what he's doing."

Meanwhile, Hardison chafes over his father's refusal to modernize.

"If it was up to him, we wouldn't even have a telephone line," said Hardison, who wears a T-shirt advertising the store's Web site - countrybutchershopanddeli.com - with the slogan "We Meat Your Needs."

It's just one of a series of innovations Hardison has planned as he looks forward to taking over completely in 2010.

The others? Just ask him. The guy won't stop talking.

Especially if you're in the market for a nice ribeye.

Paul White, 418-1447, paul.white@pilotonline.com