How a Wedding in Vegas and a Mother’s Day Gift Built a Wagyu Empire

Eric San Pedro: My name is Eric San Pedro. I am the owner of Palm Beach Meats. And this business is, it's a restaurant slash retail butcher shop, but it's much more than that. We specialize in Wagyu beef. So in the day to day, we have an all Wagyu retail butcher shop, Australian, Japanese. A little bit of domestic wagyu. And then we also have an all wagyu fast casual menu, which is kind of a fun way and an approachable way for people to experience the world's finest beef. 

The career path, it's a, it's a longer story and I won't bore you with it, but this is not,  hospitality is not really my background. I spent the better part of my life working in the field of mental health and substance abuse counseling. And my wife and I accidentally discovered Wagyu at a wedding in Vegas and it sort of paved the road to what has been a very, very wild adventure.

Eric San Pedro: Obviously it was life changing. know, we, this is not anything that we had dreamt of. My wife was a financial advisor. I was a substance abuse mental health counselor. went to a wedding. We both grew up in a world where USDA prime beef was as good as it gets. And, you know, we're not really steak house people. I grew up also in a world where my father, you know, it's not that we didn't dine out. It's that I grew up in a household where my dad would say, “You don't need a Michelin chef to cook a steak. So you'd go to a butcher shop, buy, you know, a prime cut of meat, cook it at home. We don't pay people to do something we can do at home.” 

So we went to this wedding in Vegas. Everybody has this platter of Japanese Wagyu and both my wife and I look at each other and, you know, express that we've never had anything like this. We had no idea at that moment that the course of history was going to change, but that beef was  life-changing.

Eric San Pedro: So it's in the short version is this is how we can afford to support the habit. But, you know, fast forward after the wedding to our son was born in 2016. You know, we had gone from this wedding in Vegas and we live in Florida. We kind of wrote that experience off as something that only happens in Vegas. Florida doesn't get food like this. 

Never really thought about it again until May of 2016. Our son was born in April, which was our first Mother's Day, and I decided that I would get my wife the best piece of meat that I could find. And that's when, you know, my thought process was, what was the stuff that we had in Vegas? I started to look for it, couldn't find it, didn't actually get it on Mother's Day, but within a few weeks, I had connected with some sources on the West Coast.

And they started, you know, I started buying Wagyu just for us to eat. And, you know, this turns into a conversation of, you know, really, my wife said we can't, you she loves it, but she's like, can't really afford to eat Wagyu like this. And this is how we can afford it. You know, we started as, you know, being told we can't do something. 

I figured out little ways that we could do it. I started connecting different people with different meat sources and getting discounts and saving money here and there too. I started doing this so much that I was working 60, 70 hours a week already in my career. I had a baby and you know, I would do this while everyone was asleep. So essentially I was just all night long, you know, connecting people with meat sources. And eventually I was doing it so much that, you know, our guys on the West coast just started sending us free products all the time. 

And then the conversation turned into, again, inspired by my wife. She said, you're not particularly thrilled with your career at this point. You love Wagyu. You spend so much time connecting people and talking about Wagyu. You should find a way to make this your career. And again, at that moment, we would not have dreamt of what was to come, but that's how that shift occurred. went from there to talking to an old friend who had some successful businesses. 

And yeah, I didn't really know anything about even starting a business. Now, mind you, this is 2020 when this happens. And I talked to an old friend and he had never had Wagyu. I said, hey, you gotta talk to my guy in LA. And we get him some Wagyu and he says, hey, we gotta bring this to Florida, we have to sell this product. So we set a meeting for our families to get together to discuss a business strategy, make some concrete plans. And that was March of 2020. This is no lie. COVID hit Florida the day of the meeting. We met his wife in a Walgreens parking lot. We had brought in $1,000 worth of meat. We gave them $500 worth and we said, hey, let's revisit in two weeks, three weeks when this COVID thing is over. 

Again, no one would have imagined that the world would shut down. Three weeks later, it was worse. By June of 2020, we decided to pivot. We did not open a brick and mortar. We ended up doing home deliveries from Vero Beach to Miami every Saturday. Little did we know the pandemic for us was a blessing in disguise. We were able to open a business with very little overhead. We didn't have a brick and mortar. So we didn't have rent. Now, we basically started the business with some friends on the West Coast who, you know, at that time the world had shut down. 

Japan, Australia, all of the world's Wagyu producers didn't stop producing beef, but they had no place to put it. So we were able to establish relationships with some of the biggest importers and distributors in the country who would sell us, say, one steak or a thousand at the same price. Because for them, keeping people in their jobs was important and keeping the production of beef moving forward.

You know, obviously we didn't single handedly save the Wagyu industry, but people like us were able to sort of find a space in a market where generally they sell by the pallet. You know, we had friends with a USDA processor, so we didn't really even need a place to cut meat. We had an Instagram account, we had cars, and you know, every Tuesday night I would text people and say, hey, we're doing pre-orders. Wednesday I would submit it to California.

Thursday they'd process it. Friday it goes on a plane. We picked it up in Fort Lauderdale. Saturday we get in our cars and we go from Vero to Miami and spend all day delivering meat. And again, the blessing of also people who had money to dine out had nowhere to spend it. Everybody became a home cook. We were able to establish connections with a lot of chefs because a lot of chefs had moved out of the kitchen into private, you know, private cooking.

And, you, we actually ended up bringing a chef on our team. Again, having no idea how the stars were kind of aligning for us. We brought a chef on our team for no other reason, but we needed help and he needed, you know, a little, a little extra cash. And it wasn't to develop a menu. wasn't to cook anything. was, Hey, do you have a car? Are you willing to drive, you know, 10 hours every Saturday? Sure. This is the position.

We also connected with a lot of different people, learned a lot. We did this for a year.  And that's where the concept of Palm Beach Meats really developed was, you know, one, accidentally we had a chef on our team. had,  you know, no, we never had to sit on inventory. So there were no, there were no losses. I pre-ordered, never ordered more than we needed. We were able to establish a brand with very little overhead. 

And, you know, we met a lot of amazing people along the way and an old butcher had actually told me, hey, listen, wherever you cut meat, you should have the ability to cook meat because you're dealing with a very expensive perishable. Whatever you don't move is a loss. So what do you do with it? So we knew when we were looking for a place,  a brick and mortar, we needed a kitchen. 

Now we have a chef on our team. We have an idea and we need a kitchen. And, you know, we also were establishing a customer base, right? Without putting a whole lot of money up to do this. So when we, when we opened, you know, really our, our first, and the project has always evolved when we started the concept of, of food, turning this wagyu into food really was just about mitigating losses. We, we, we only served lunch Saturday and Sunday.

The menu changed every weekend based on what was in the case. And then again, seeing, being able to kind of test things was really a blessing of the pandemic for us. But we started to see people showing up for lunch and we would do different things. Had a guy come in, we did a Philly cheesesteak one day and nothing was really conventional. It was, you know, shaved Wagyu, pequin pepper, caramelized onions, Swiss cheese, and truffle aioli with real black truffles. The guy from Philly told me, Hey, Eric, this is the best cheesesteak I've ever had. You know, I said, Jeff, you come here every Saturday, we'll leave this on the menu for you. And the cheesesteak is still on the menu to this day. 

The burger still on the menu because you know his friend they were barbers Nick he liked the burger and I said you guys come every Saturday we'll just keep these on the menu those are two top sellers to this day and you know the other thing that it did would you know using Jeff and Nick who were two barbers from up the street they never had Wagyu before and they loved this so what we realize what this does in addition to just, you know, zero waste and mitigating losses. 

This also opens a dialogue about this product. Well, let me tell you why this cheesesteak is so great. It's not just because our team in the kitchen is so strong. They are, but it's a cheat code. We're using the world's greatest beef. Now, would you know, Jeff and Nick, they're still friends of ours. They don't just buy cheesesteaks and burgers. We've now opened a door into the world of Wagyu for them.

I don't want to call it a gateway drug because we're never in the business of tricking people out of their money. Once people have. And because we have strong relationships and we work directly with importers in our retail and our kitchen, we're able to keep the prices relatively low. I say relatively because there's always people out there that just don't really know the value of Wagyu and they're going to say we priced them out. And I totally understand that.

But for the most part, I think we have something on our menu for $12.99 and it has wagyu in it. most of our sandwiches, it's all mostly handheld, casual food, and most of it's under, say, $25. And what we're able to do is introduce people to something. If they just walk in and they see the meat case and they see the prices, there's going to be some sticker shock. 

But if they taste it, in a way that they understand. It's the same for myself. If you would have told me before the wedding in Vegas, hey, you'd spend over $100 on a piece of raw meat, I'd have told you you were insane. But today, we're Kobe certified. We bring in stuff that is over $300 a pound. I'm a believer. I'm a convert, if you will. 

So for us, that food also gave us a way to open a dialogue. And it also opened the door for everyday people to enjoy something that they might not otherwise get to enjoy. And then, as we moved forward, we realized that we had a lot of customers who love to cook Wagyu, but on a Tuesday for lunch, they may not wanna cook. We were considered a complimentary service to our customers.

The concept has always been evolving. It's still evolved  to this day, but that's kind of the story of how we went from, you know, not being in this industry to, you know, diving head first, you know, the, it's a journey, but it all stems from passion. We love it.

Eric San Pedro: So back then, not that this is like a hundred years ago, social media was more friendly than it is today. There was less about algorithms. As if someone followed you, they got to see whatever information you were putting out there. And I would say by and large, we grew this business on Instagram. We had a website, we had a Facebook,

yet Instagram, but. In 2020. It was all Instagram to this day and I still run our Instagram account and you know we have two locations now we're working on. Another two actually that will be just retail. We're running an offsite kitchen. We do a lot of different things. We're now doing wholesale, you know nationwide. You know when.

I still run social media accounts and the reason that I run it is not because I'm so good at it. It definitely has character. I'm 45 years old, and did not grow up in a world with social media. But the reason why I continue to run it is we still receive orders from chefs for thousands of dollars worth of beef through a DM. Can't hand that off to somebody.

Now we're not there to where I found somebody who will respond to these DMS and even our customers. They know that I'm on the other side and they DM and and really you know what I lack in skills in the kitchen. I believe. My job is people and and you know, aside from the food, one of one of the things that.

Palm Beach Meats is, you know, we've, used to say, we're not a restaurant, we're not a butcher shop, we're not a market. This concept is community and it's about bringing people together with food as the common denominator. And that, that, you know, I don't want to get too sidetracked, but that's, you know, again, learning from doing home deliveries, we did a delivery from a billionaire's house and this is a true story. And the next stop was the dump. And what we realized was everybody eats.

Most people like to eat and everybody deserves to eat well. That's the foundation of what we do. And because I'm not a chef, I'm not a chef, I can cook a steak, but we have good friends who take care of that for us and we stay very well fed. They love to cook, we love to eat.  But what I can bring to the table and where this business really thrives and social media doesn't...

For me to say on Instagram through a DM, I'm gonna show up at your house, we have to build a rapport. You have to trust that I'm not some scary guy. I might look like a scary guy, but at the end of the day, the first 300 customers, I know them by name, I know their dogs, I know their children. 

Being that we started this in 2020, we've watched a lot of people kind of grow with us.  It is very, we're in the business of people. So that's the other reason, you know, if we're in the middle of service and it can be very busy and someone sends a DM and they're like, Hey, do you have, you know, Japanese Wagyu blank in the case today? Most of our customers would attest they get an answer within 15 minutes.

And I believe as long as I can do it, I can physically do it. I will do it. I believe we owe it to our customers. We're not selling an inexpensive product. So we have to be there. And it doesn't matter about the price of the product, but I just believe that, you know, we built this business one person at a time. Every customer, you know, we say this, it's very hokey, but the team is myself, my son, who is now nine and my wife, and we have a very strong chef, Chef BJ Wright, who's really a ride or die with us as well. But that's four people doing all these different things. You know, I believe that, you know, we're a family business and, you know, again, we're not this huge corporation

So, it's our mission to make people feel like they're coming into our home. It's a family business. We spend more time in the four walls of our business than we do at home. When we hire people, we let them know, my son used to sleep on the floor. When we were building this place with our hands, chasing the clock, trying to get the doors open, my son had a blanket,  pillows there. He cooks, he cooks on the line. He's now homeschooled.

Nine years old, works with Chef BJ. He runs Frye Station a couple days a week. I love it. But people are coming into our home, whether it be our Instagram account or a DM, or they're actually physically walking into the building, or we're in Orlando. We moved to Orlando. We opened our second location here December of 2024. But we go back and forth from here,

Orlando to West Palm, our original location. And we tell everybody, now, especially in West Palm, I can't walk into the building without seeing people that we've known for many years. And whether we're physically standing up front, we let our staff know when you join this team, you are part of our family. And the job really is filling those shoes of making people feel like they're coming into our home. A lot of these people in West Palm are really part of our family. Like they.

You know, they've been with us through the whole thing from home deliveries in 2022. You know, last year we were at a Michelin ceremony. We got a Bib Gourmand  for our location in West Palm again. It's a wild ride, but a lot of us don't even want to call them customers because it's not transactional. This again for me, we're not chasing dollars. We're chasing dreams and like I said, we're in the business of people.

We truly view everything we do. built this one customer at a time. And like I said, having built these relationships over the years, no matter how many locations we open, it's our goal to make people feel like when they come in, they're stepping into our home.

Eric San Pedro: It's all accidental. It's all very serendipitous. You know, we didn't plan it this way. You know, it could have been very different, but the way that our journey works and, you know, not a religious person. I'm not overly spiritual, but there's, you know, a lot of the things that have happened in our journey.

I can't say or do anything shy of a miracle. Like if I made a left turn here, this wouldn't have happened. You know, we're walking into 2026. It has already been a huge year for us. You know, and again, I don't define success by,  you know, financial terms. You know, we last year just really taking a step back and going selling Wagyu out of the trunk of your car to being in a Michelin ceremony is nothing shy of a miracle . We partnered on a concept that just opened in New York City called the Wagyu Room, partnered with Sushi by Boo. 

We opened that concept in February. These are things that, you know, when I was sitting at a wedding in Vegas, wasn't a dream. You know, the way that these things happen is wild to me, but it's all kind of accidental. It's about being in the right place at the right time. You know, when I have defining moments where I'm loading a box of beef into a car on a Friday night. 

And, you know, we were still working at our jobs and thinking to myself like, man, this is how does this ever turn into something more than this? You know, I can't see the path, but I have to believe that it's possible. And that is really like how this has all happened between, you know, accidents and serendipitous events and

I don't know how you would define it, but meeting 300 people was an accident. getting to know them, it's a wonderful accident. Like I said, these have become our friends, these have become our family members, and the journey continues. It's very, it's hard, it's very hard. Every day I think, man, I could do something else and not work a million hours a day.

I can make more money doing X, Y, and Z. But if we take a step back and look at if from 2020 to today, we were able to accomplish this, I believe that. I mean, it's as hokey as it sounds, you know, the sky is the limit for us. And as long as the stars keep aligning for us, this, you know, this journey is just going to get better.

Eric San Pedro: So it's like I said, everything is accidental, right? I never really thought of brand building. You know, we had a logo. I kind of understood, you know, this is our brand. You know, we had ourselves when we, you know, I ran the front by myself for the first year. I was the brand. But I'll tell you, we did an event one day and

A person came up to me and he said something to me, you can never unhear things that, that, that people say, at least I can't. He said something to me that I would never forget. And it kind of drives me. And this is where this, this is an evolution. This journey is always changing. I never thought, you know, going from home deliveries to our brick and mortar, we could have, we could have lived and died in those four walls of our shop in West Palm. There's a guy who came to me, not very, we weren't very close. He comes in sometimes and he said to me, I believe in this brand. He said, what I see for you is 25 locations up and down the East Coast in the next 10 years, and then you retire. 

And I'm gonna lie, as much as I love this, this is, again, something that I never really considered, you know, the silly business that we started in the pandemic, pulling boxes out of cars and delivering meat to people's houses. I never even really thought of this as something that I could retire on.