The Story
“I would have liked to have been a surgeon,” John Losavio told The Westfield Leader in 1999, at 82. “People say I have a surgeon’s hands.”
He didn’t come from butchers. His father owned a barber shop. Barber, surgeon, butcher: only one of them sends you home with dinner. In April 1939 John made his pick.
John Losavio opened in Scotch Plains in April 1939. The Times wrote in 1979 that he started with two men: John, and the late Frank Bopp.
By the time he opened, The Times wrote ten years after that, he had already decided to handle only the highest quality prime beef. That was the business plan. There was no second page.
The old papers can’t agree on which day in April, so we say April.
On the twelfth anniversary John took out this ad. New, larger quarters on Park Avenue. He put his name on it and thanked the customers before he got to the meat.
Read the note under the headline: “because it is you who have made it possible.” Remember that line. It comes back.
Yes. Same number.
Vincent, Vinnie in the papers, joins his father, out of Fairleigh Dickinson with a degree in marketing and advertising. Then somebody hands him a white coat.
Nick joins his father and brother, out of Emerson College with a degree in speech. A butcher with a speech degree. You’ve been warned.
The shop’s old website told the history one generation at a time. Second: Vincent and Nick. Third: Vincent Jr., who grew up around the store and went to Seton Hall. John Scolavino is on the page too.
Vincent Sr. posted it on Facebook, and somebody printed it. That’s how you know it’s a family business.
Forty years in, The Times wrote, John was still going to the packers himself and hand picking every piece of meat.
The party ran on violets and balloons. They were champion violets, raised by Mel Leavitt, who won awards for them all over the country. John did not raise violets. John had enough to do.
Nobody’s asking for them back.
Red stripes, red bow ties.
The paper trail
And the same sentence. John signed “because it is you who have made it possible” in 1951. It was back in 1979, back in 1989, and on the sign in 1999.
The offers in these ads ended when the ads did.
2029. Ninety.
Ad not written yet.
Bring your own violets.
John was past 70. Two days a week at 4 a.m., The Times wrote, he was at the meat packers hand picking what went in his case. Fresh hanging beef. He would not buy boxed.
He had a reputation for it, too. Buyers for top companies told the wholesalers that whatever John bought, they would take the other half.
On Sunday, April 16, from 2 to 5, the family threw an open house for the fiftieth.
The Westfield Leader came by for the sixtieth and, in the paper’s words, “with some prodding” got a few stories out of them.
Marie Losavio
Marie, John’s wife, earned a master’s degree from Juilliard. As a young woman she sang as a guest soloist at Carnegie Hall.
In 1999 she was still doing the books, and working the register when the holidays got busy.
Of John, she told the paper: “He came from a musical family, so he was easy to know.”
Two of her favorite poems were on the shop’s old website. From one of them:
You tell on yourself by the friends you seek
…
By the records you play on your phonograph
The Leader called the shop “very much a family affair.” Vinnie Jr. was helping out by scrubbing the butcher blocks and carrying customers’ bags. Everybody starts somewhere. He grew up around the store, went to Seton Hall, and became the third generation of Losavios in the business. Two of John’s granddaughters handled newsletters, ads and labels.
John Losavio worked alongside his sons until shortly before he died in 2004. He was 87.
The big thing, Marie told the Leader in 1999: “he loves his work, and looks forward to coming in every morning.”
Behind the counter
In these photos: black and white, up to the tin ceiling, with a cow border nobody’s apologizing for. The Patience sign tells you why you’re waiting.
New Jersey Family Business of the Year, 2006. The seal went on the wall with everything else.
Vinnie had 43 years in by then. Nick had 35. Between them they had seen a lot of Christmas Eves.
New Jersey Monthly readers' pick for Best Butcher: 2011, 2012 and 2014. We cut the meat. They picked us.
The shop put out a video that year. The beef was the quiet one.
The party was May 11. Jersey Jukebox sang doo-wop in a parking lot, which is a sentence that doesn’t come up enough. Somebody made a movie for it, too.
Off the clock
The Times wrote that John sold to them at cost, and usually donated half of what they ordered.
That January the butchers served beef stew to 165 homeless people at a church in Plainfield. “We always give money to people,” Vinnie said, “but it was nice to do that ourselves.”
A collection at the shop, for the veterans at Valley Brook Village. Customers chipped in, the veterans ate. There’s a video about it, posted in 2016, and Patch photographed a jar at the shop in May 2022.
87 years. Three generations of the Losavio family. USDA Prime, dry aged. 389 Park Avenue.
Open Tuesday, November 10th
If you’re going to do something, do it right.
The Losavio family