The Butcher Block is permanently closed, but customers ‘don’t have to go vegetarian’

Last fall, Butcher Block owners Tina and Danny Collins were a little coy about what was going on with their 30-year-old Maize business, and they said to stay tuned for more news. Now they’re ready to share it.

The two are now working at Bolling’s Meatery & Eatery in Iola and will deliver meat to Wichita one Saturday a month.

“Danny is still cutting meat,” Tina Collins says. “I’m still waiting on the customer and talking more than he’d like me to.”

In February, they returned to Wichita to sell meat out of the Butcher Block at 5201 N. Maize Road for one day, but now that space is permanently closed.

They plan to visit Wichita once a month — most likely on the third or fourth Saturday, though they’ve not decided which yet — and sell meat at the Ace Hardware across from where the Butcher Block used to be.

Eventually, they’ll have refrigerators and freezers set up there and have extra meat beyond what customers order so shoppers can stop by between noon and 6 p.m. to pick up filets, ground bison, bone-in pork chops and other items.

“There’s just a lot of things we can offer,” Tina Collins says.

She says they’ll be able to sell some items at reduced prices because they’re able to work more cost effectively out of Iola.

The Bolling’s arrangement came about because Danny Collins used to travel to Iola to fish.

During previous construction along Maize Road, which caused Butcher Block customer traffic to drop off, Tina Collins says, “Danny would come down here and go fishing . . . to keep him from stressing out not too terribly bad about not being busy.”

Danny Collins met Bolling’s co-owner Cara Thomas online through a group for meat cutters. Then he visited Bolling’s, was impressed and told his wife she had to check it out.

“Oh, my gosh, it’s beautiful,” Tina Collins says.

“We’re a fourth-generation butcher,” Thomas says.

Her family established the business in 1966, but before that, her great-grandfather was a traveling butcher.

“That’s how we got started.”

Bolling’s is now at 415 W. Madison Ave. in Iola. Eight years ago, Thomas added a deli. A year ago, she added a steakhouse.

Thomas’ parents own the butcher side of the business, and she has the retail and restaurant sides.

There’s also a coffee bar that serves smoothies as well.

Thomas says she already had some contact with Wichitans through hunters who visit southeast Kansas.

“I wanted to do more, but I didn’t know how to break in,” she says. “My ultimate goal was expansion, and I could not do that solely.”

She says the Collinses “had a ready-to-go clientele” and didn’t want to fully retire.

“It feels personal when you’re small and you’ve made these connections,” Thomas says. “They just didn’t want to leave them high and dry.”

Tina Collins calls the Bolling’s meat case “a little country store type thing.”

She says she talks to everyone who comes in.

“I am in heaven.”

Collins says she and her husband are looking forward to keeping their connection to Wichita customers, too.

For their first delivery, she says, “Our customers were amazing and ordered and ordered and ordered.”

Orders can be placed on the Butcher Block or Bolling’s Facebook pages.

March 28 most likely will be the next delivery date, and Collins says more customers are becoming aware of what’s happening.

“It’s really just snowballing into something beautiful.”

She says previously, customers had told her they almost had to give up meat when the Butcher Block went out of business.

“Now they don’t have to go vegetarian.”

This story was originally published March 3, 2020 at 10:48 AM.