The owners of Leeway Butcher have announced they will be closing the shop at the end of October, about a year after closing their restaurant, Leeway Franks.
Owners Lee and K Meisel made a post on the shop’s Facebook page Monday, sharing they’re heartbroken to close amid rising financial barriers.
“The brick and mortar model just gradually became unsustainable for us with increasing costs after covid. So, we’re adapting the business,” Lee said in an email.
The couple opened Leeway Franks, their former restaurant, at 935 Iowa St. in 2015. They opened Leeway Butcher next door in 2018. After September 2023, the Meisels closed the restaurant’s daily operations to expand outreach through the butcher shop.
Lee, Standing Rock Sioux, and the business itself have earned numerous awards and recognitions, including Lee being named as one of the top 50 Native Business Entrepreneurs by Native Business Magazine in 2019. Leeway Franks & Butcher was a recipient of the most recent cycle of Natural and Cultural Heritage grants from the county, announced in May.
Although Leeway Butcher is closing, the Meisels said in their Facebook post that “our sausage-making days are not over.” They are working to bring Leeway products to grocery store shelves next. Lee said they’ll share project updates.
They will also continue their educational initiative, Wakarusa Native Foodways, which aims to support Native food sovereignty. As part of a bison harvest workshop and community meal hosted at Haskell Indian Nations University in September, Lee was one of the harvesters and spoke about the value in sharing Indigenous food knowledge.
Lee said he’s grateful the mom-and-pop shop was immediately supported by the community, one of several reasons “Lawrence will always be our home.”
“And for me, to represent my tribe and Haskell family in an industry that has been historically dominated by huge corporations, bottom lines and the extraction of cheap labor and resources, well, I’m immensely proud of that,” Lee said.
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Maya Hodison (she/her), equity reporter, can be reached at mhodison@lawrencekstimes.com. Read more of her work for the Times here. Check out her staff bio here.
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