Family beef is sizzling over the long run of the enduring Latest York food market chain Western Beef.
The reasonably priced supermarket brand with a sentient cactus mascot (his name is Charlie) and meat as low-cost as its looks could soon turn into tartare (e.g., luxury condos).
In 2020, the founding father of Wester Beef, Peter Castellanas Sr., died from COVID-19. During his life, he was charged and located guilty of many mob-related crimes, amongst them selling adulterated meat, defrauding the federal government in a stolen food stamps scheme, committing bankruptcy fraud, lying to the Securities and Exchange Commission and extortion (for having meat suppliers threatened with bone breakage over a debt), in line with Curbed.
Now, his grandson, Peter III, who was until recently Western Beef’s CEO, is attempting to take the corporate in a latest direction.
He hopes to money in on skyrocketing land prices within the boroughs by razing his family’s stores and developing luxury residential buildings of their place. He shuttered seven Western Beef stores to construct projects like the Astor in Long Island City, where rent is roughly $5,000 per thirty days for a two-bedroom unit. In The Bronx, he teamed up with a developer to create a nine-story, 159-mixed-unit development.
“I had a marketing strategy, all of the numbers worked out,” he told Curbed. “I had a few of the perfect economical minds available to me.”
But his father and Western Beef board chairman Peter Jr. — who grew up within the family business, constructing it right into a $300 million chain with 20 stores and a pair of million square feet of real estate within the Latest York area — has a bone to choose together with his son.
“I just wish to get our business back,” Peter Jr. told the magazine. “That is my baby. That is what I live for.”
He has since relieved his son of his position and halted the redevelopment projects.
“[They] offered us big, big money for the true estate,” Peter Jr. said of a Western Beef near the Marcy Projects. “They desired to put huge condominiums over there, like they’re doing in the entire area.”
He’s not having it.
But Peter the younger isn’t done “steaking” out his territory. He’s since launched an actual estate firm, dubbed Cactus Asset Management, that manages greater than 25 mixed-use developments and Western Beef properties. He plans to focus on Western Beef stores and other businesses in areas like Carroll Gardens and The Bronx for redevelopment going forward.
What’s next? We’re hoping for Western Beef-branded residences.
