Carnivore Oak Park, the artisan butcher and fish market that has operated in the Pleasant District since 2014, is closing its doors at 1042 Pleasant St. and merging into Carnival Grocery at 824 S. Oak Park Ave. The move is expected to be completed by early July.
The partnership brings together two locally rooted businesses that share more than a similar name. Arthur Paris, owner of Carnival Grocery, and Erik Williams, founder of Carnivore, say the merger is in response to the pressures facing independent food retailers, including a new Pete’s Market opening at Oak Park Avenue and Madison Street.
“Banding together with another local merchant to merge our businesses will make us both stronger,” Paris said. “We’ll have one rent payment, one property tax payment, one electric bill, and we can combine our customer base.”
For Williams, the path to this partnership was rocky to say the least. Earlier this year, Carnivore launched a GoFundMe campaign that raised nearly $34,000 from more than 300 community donors to help the shop cover deferred maintenance and overdue vendor payments. The response was overwhelming, but the timing was brutal.
The GoFundMe funds went first to debts owed to small farm vendors, but there wasn’t enough left to cover an overdue energy bill. In late March, ComEd cut power to the shop. To make matters worse, Williams was hospitalized at the same time with an MRSA infection, a serious bacterial skin infection. The shop went three and a half weeks without full electricity, and a significant amount of product spoiled.
The experience made the math undeniable. “I can’t ask people for all this,” a grateful Williams said. “I have to find some other way to make this functional.”
That other way turned out to be Paris. The two had known of each other since both set up shop in Oak Park around the same time; but they only got to know each other in recent months as talks progressed.
When Paris proposed bringing Carnivore’s operation inside Carnival, Williams called it “a stunning idea.”
“Every time that we’ve sat down and talked about it, it just makes sense,” Williams said.
Paris, for his part, sees Williams as a rare find. “Erik is an artisan-level butcher and chef,” he said. “Very few guys have both culinary skills and butcher skills.”
`The buildout at Carnival will reconfigure the store’s existing meat section, removing part of the front island to create a dedicated alcove for Carnivore’s counter. Customers can expect the same faces, the same phone number, and the same house-made products, including Williams’s 30-plus sausage recipes, smoked salmon, and locally sourced proteins from Illinois farms like Kilgus Farmstead. Carnivore gift cards will be honored at the new location.
A full lunch program featuring Williams’s burgers and seafood sandwiches is a longer-term goal, pending a kitchen hood installation that would require installing sprinklers in the entire building.
To mark the launch, the team is planning a celebration in Carnival’s parking lot with grilling, beer vendors, and a first look at the new setup.
Williams said he is most excited about focusing on what he does best. “To leave behind the things that historically we’re not that great at doing, but then be able to do the things that we are great at doing,” he said — the butchery, the sausage-making, the relationships with local farmers, and the one-on-one service that keeps customers coming back.
Carnival Grocery is located at 824 S. Oak Park Ave. Paris also operates locations in Lincoln Park and Edgebrook.