Inside a warehouse in the Northern California city of San Rafael, you'll find a spectacular

abundance of bovine flesh.

There are giant walk-in freezers full to the brim with rounds, flanks, chucks, and loins in

various stages of aging.

In the prep station, workers use vertical band saws to trim hanger steaks and rib-eyes.

We're not, generally speaking, a Tuesday night dinner.

We're an anniversary, a birthday, a holiday, a celebration when it's natural to get a big

steak. That's Brian Flannery. He and his daughter, Katie, run Flannery Beef, a butcher shop

and meat distributor. They specialize in beef, which they source, cut, and trim for restaurants all over the country.

On average, Americans eat around 83 pounds of beef per year per person.

Before all of that meat gets to their tables, it passes through the hands of a butcher,

like Brian, Katie, or one of their 12 employees.

And turning a 1,400-pound cow into an edible and economically viable product is more

challenging than it might appear.

Anybody can pick up a knife, but people that can do it correctly are not easy to find.

To cut portions, you've got to look at that piece of meat. You've got to gauge the size and the shape.

They're thick, the thin, they're round, and each piece is different. It really takes a lot of

thicken.

For the Freakonomics Radio Network, this is the economics of everyday things.

I'm Zachary Crackett. Today, Butchers.

Many decades ago, before supermarkets became ubiquitous, buying groceries was a very different

experience. You'd go to a separate market for each of your

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