Vic and Anthony Puharich, a father-and-son team, opened their first butcher shop, Victor Churchill, on Queen Street in Woollahra, Sydney. Their second shop is on High Street in Armadale, Melbourne. It shares the values of the first, but it was designed as its own space rather than a copy.
A former bank building
Unlike the Sydney shop, which occupies a historic butcher shop, the Melbourne store sits in a heritage-listed building: the site of the oldest State Savings Bank of Victoria. Anthony Puharich has said the family had once planned a shop in New York, but chose Melbourne instead and kept the principles of the Sydney store.
Design by loopcreative
The interior is by designer Rod Faucheux of loopcreative, a studio based in Surry Hills, Sydney. He carried over several features from the first shop: Himalayan salt bricks in the curing rooms, solid-wood butcher blocks in the centre of the room and marble floors. Both stores also share dramatic lighting, dark colours and curving forms.
Small details tie the design to the trade. The door handles are shaped like sausages, and a fully restored meat slicer from the 1930s is in daily use. There are no screens in the shop. Customers watch demonstrations, taste samples and talk with the staff across the counters.
A family business
Anthony Puharich is a fourth-generation butcher. The family also runs a meat distribution company, established in 1996, which supplies high-quality meat across Australia. The owners chose to open a second shop slowly rather than roll the first one out as a chain.
As a general point, shop interiors that show the work being done, with open counters and real tools, tend to give customers more to look at than display screens do.
Project credits
- Project: Victor Churchill butcher shop, High Street, Armadale, Melbourne, Australia
- Owners: Vic and Anthony Puharich
- Design: Rod Faucheux, loopcreative (Surry Hills, Sydney)
- Text: Tuija Seipell
- Source: The Cool Hunter