After Selling River Bear, Justin Brunson Is Back in the Meat Game...on His Own Terms

"I took the last year off and took care of myself," says chef and restaurateur Justin Brunson, who at one point owned six eateries in Denver. "I worked fifteen years in a row, probably ninety hours a week. ... It took me 23 years in the industry to figure out that there was another life out there."

In 2019, when he launched River Bear American Meats and took on several other projects while also running Old Major, his popular fine-dining restaurant, he told Westword that he was working seventeen hours a day, seven days a week. "It took the pandemic for me to be like, 'What am I doing? Why am I doing this? I haven't been happy in years,'" he admits.

In June 2020, he sold Old Major — where his Masterpiece Delicatessen was also based at the time — to Amos Watts, who now runs the Fifth String there. Broadway Market, where Brunson had a concept called Royal Rooster, never reopened during the pandemic, leaving him with just River Bear and Culture Meat & Cheese, which has current locations at Denver Central Market and Denver International Airport.

But last August, he sold River Bear, too. "It was a perfect opportunity for me to make some money, to do my own thing, just work with myself and be my only investor," he says. "So it was an opportunity I couldn't say no to. So now I'm starting my own business — my first business where I'm my only partner, my only investor. I'm really stoked for that."
That business is Brunson Meat Co., which, for now, will be focused on bacon and a line of spice rubs that he expects to launch in September. This isn't the first time Brunson has been in the bacon game: He launched Denver Bacon Company a decade ago. But this time, he's doing things differently.

Getting the brand going has happened on his own terms. Over the past year, "I've been doing tons of fishing, traveling, working out — I'm down eighty pounds, which is awesome," he says. "Just working on myself mentally and physically, and slowly building this new company. I'm taking it slow and there's no stress, because there's no deadlines. It's just me."

He's also done a lot of reflecting about his former career. "I've thought about how much time I put into making other people happy and not myself happy, and in the last year, I just made myself happy," he says. "Chefs and people in the industry — we give up so much of ourselves for everybody else, and then just abuse the shit out of ourselves."

He still loves working with food, he adds, "and I respect everybody so much that's doing it." But now he's found a different way to channel his passion.

When the pandemic hit, Brunson had another realization: "I wanted to get better food out for the masses, not just the top 10 percent," he recalls. "The last part of my career was fine dining and super high-end, expensive meats, and not everyone can afford that kind of stuff. To actually see people food-insecure, it was like, whoa."

So the bacon from Brunson Meat Co. will be priced on par with that of other major producers — "somewhere between $8.50 and $9.50 on the grocery-store shelf" for a standard twelve-ounce pack, he says. But there is a focus on "better-quality food, and by that I mean no nitrates, no tripolyphosphates, no MSG. It's actually smoked. I'm taking everything I've learned through my life and putting it together for this new meat company. It's meat for the masses. It's not meat for the elite — it's workingman's meat."

Right now, he's in talks with Kroger and hopes to have his bacon at its stores. He'll also sell to restaurants through What Chefs Want, Shamrock, Cheese Importers and more. "But I really want this to be a national retail brand," he notes. "It's super high-quality. There's nothing like this in grocery stores that's not $13 per package." The company will launch with three flavors: regular, black pepper and sugar-free.

Brunson is getting his spices from the Spice Guy, a local company that he'll also work with to produce rubs and blends based on recipes he's developed over his years in the industry. The pork is coming from Seaboard Foods, which is the second-largest pork producer in America and has a farm in Holyoke. "I get to support Colorado agriculture," he points out. "It's commodity, but it's great commodity pork, and that's how we're going to be able to feed the masses."

As for the branding, which includes a pig sporting sunglasses created by Ryan Willard, owner of Marion Street Tattoo, "I wanted it to be fun," Brunson says. "There's so many fun things you can do with that!"

And with life in general. "If I've learned anything in the last 44 years, less is more," Brunson concludes. "I want to simplify my life and be happy. But at the same time, I don't know. The door is always open to do more stuff."