2 SLO County butcher shops reopen with new owner — and it’s a longtime local family

A prominent San Luis Obispo County ranching family has taken over two closed butcher shops in Paso Robles and Templeton.

Daniel Sinton, owner of Sinton & Sons, said that the butcher stores represent the family’s next step in five generations of North County ranchers. The locations were formerly occupied by J&R Natural Meats, which closed in May.

“We raise beef cattle in the Shandon and Pozo areas and have done so since my great-great-grandfather, Bernard Sinsheimer, started the Avenales Ranch (East of Pozo, CA) in 1875,” Sinton said in a news release.

Sinton told the Tribune in an interview that the stores sell locally raised and processed meats as well as other artisanal goods.

“We really want to focus on getting local proteins that everyone who lives here in San Luis Obispo County and visitors to our area can trust to be of the highest standard and raised in the right way,” Sinton said. “We are excited to focus on small local ranchers and farmers who we know personally to provide beef, lamb, pork and chicken.”

Sinton said that opening the two brick-and-mortar shops will hopefully help the family achieve their goals of creating accessible meat processing that gives a fair share of profits back to ranchers.

Since the 1960s, the share of profit a rancher gets when their meat is processed and sold has declined, making it harder to make a living as a meat farmer, Sinton said.

This is cause for alarm, he said, and something he’s hoping to to remedy in SLO County.

“The centralized system is an oligopoly and has all the pricing power,” Sinton said. “We want to slide that share of the profit back in the direction of the rancher and farmer.”

Sinton said both the stores and the ranch’s processing facilities will receive renovations that will allow the company to increase its processing volume and the variety of animal meats they can turn into goods for farmers and ranchers.

“On the processing side, we are purchasing a lot of equipment to allow us to service all different types of animals and ensure that we are able to butcher and produce a final product that honors the animal and all of the hard work that the farmers and ranchers have put in,” he said.

Both the Paso Robles location on 3450 Riverside Ave. and the Templeton store next to Trader Joe’s are now open for business, although Sinton said that the Paso Robles store has yet to receive renovations.

“We want you to be able to go to a place that knows exactly where the animals were raised, what breed they were, why they taste differently and ensure that they were raised humanely and to a standard we can trust,” Sinton said.

Those interested in placing and order to get their own meat processed can find the Sinton family on their website sintonandsons.com or call 805-237-8100.