Steve Dawson on running Lawrenceville’s Fat Butcher shop

Steve Dawson is the owner and butcher at Lawrenceville’s Fat Butcher, a neighborhood butcher shop and sandwich shop that he opened in 2023. Earlier in his career, Dawson, who grew up in Westmoreland County, was a geologist in the oil and gas industry, but in 2014 he wanted a change of pace and decided to enter a career in the restaurant industry. After dipping his toes working as a butcher in restaurants, Dawson worked in a butcher shop in Madison, Wisconsin, before moving back to western Pennsylvania, leading to him opening Fat Butcher in Lawrenceville.

How did you go from being a geologist to a butcher?

I was a geologist up until about 2014, and I left the consulting world to go into the restaurant world. I had a close friend who was a chef, and we had put together a plan to open a restaurant, and I found myself in a butcher shop with little to no experience. The butchers were like, “you should go work in a restaurant and get some experience and then come back.” So I did that. I worked in restaurants for a while, and then in 2017, I moved back to the butcher shop full time.

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