From BJ's to ButcherBox: A Retired Retail Executive Finds a Second Career at a Startup

For practitioners who have spent their entire lives in retail management, what does retirement mean? Some might take up hobbies like woodworking or painting, while others enjoy extra time on the golf course or leisure time with grandchildren.

For Mike Billings, retirement was indeed leisurely at first. After more than 40 years in the grocery industry, including 25 years leading the meat and seafood department at BJ's Wholesale Club, he thought he had reached the end of a long and fulfilling career. He planned to split his time between his home west of Boston and Martha's Vineyard, where he grew up, walking on the beach and spending a few hours a day trading stocks. For many, that would be an ideal life.

But Billings missed the fast-paced environment at BJ's—where every day was filled, with problems to solve and high-cost decisions to make. For most people, that pace is stressful, and they might head toward a quiet retirement as quickly as possible.

Billings, however, thrived in it.

"People don't understand this business; it's fast-paced, and things are always changing," he told Grocery Dive. "There's always something to fix. When you're suddenly pulled out of it, it's like, 'Man, have I really slowed down.'"

A year into retirement, in 2016, Billings received a LinkedIn message: "Interesting background—need to talk."

The message was from Mike Salguero, who had founded ButcherBox a year earlier—an online meat supplier selling high-quality grass-fed beef through a monthly subscription model. Salguero had started with a Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign and was personally handling meat procurement at the time, but he wasn't doing it well.

"We didn't really know what we were doing back then," he told Grocery Dive. "We had never bought meat before."

Salguero could have hired a recent business school graduate to join the small team, or found a retail veteran with more than a decade of experience. But he had a theory: find the most experienced meat expert he could, and the costs saved through that person's system would far exceed their salary.

Over a fried chicken sandwich lunch at Shake Shack, Salguero made his pitch to Billings. A week later, the former BJ's executive officially ended his retirement to join the small online startup.

A tough negotiator

Billings grew up in the meat industry. His grandfather ran a turkey farm on Martha's Vineyard, and young Mike often helped out while his parents worked. It was hard labor—shoveling waste, feeding, and cleaning sheds. But he enjoyed contributing to the family business and spending time with his grandparents.

At 16, he got his first butchering job at a local grocery store and worked part-time in the meat department at a Stop & Shop in Boston to put himself through college. He earned a degree in medical technology from Boston State College (now the University of Massachusetts), but found he could make more money doing what he knew best. He took a butchering job at Purity Supreme—a supermarket chain acquired by Stop & Shop in the mid-1990s—and quickly rose to meat manager, then to head of the chain's deli operations.

In 1985, Billings got his first taste of building a business from scratch. Boston's upscale grocer J. Bildner & Sons hired him to manage its meat and seafood departments. He helped the company expand rapidly from one Boston store to 32, including moves into the South and Midwest. But although the chain was praised by food writers, it had borrowed too much and expanded too quickly, and just three years after Billings joined, itfiled for bankruptcy。

Less than two years later, Billings was involved in another startup—and this time it ended much better.

BJ's Wholesale Club is now a publicly traded company with more than 200 stores and annual sales of $130 million. When the chain hired Billings in 1988 to run its new meat and bakery operations, it had only 16 stores. For nine months after taking the job, he traveled from store to store building out the departments, handling everything from hiring butchers to making sure electrical outlets were in the right places.

"I lived out of two suitcases during that time," Billings said. "We went from Medford, Rhode Island, all the way to Virginia Beach and Florida—basically up and down the entire East Coast."

Over the next 25 years, as head of meat and seafood procurement, Billings helped build out even more departments. He refined category processes to run like clockwork, eventually managing a buying team. He became a well-connected and respected name in the industry, serving in leadership roles with organizations like the North American Meat Institute.

At ButcherBox, he was back to square one, building the business with the same intensity as when he first started. The challenge energized him, and he saw a real opportunity for success. At BJ's, Billings had built a large antibiotic-free meat category, including some of the first product lines to reach mainstream retail. He understood the appeal of natural meat.

"[Salguero] didn't have to do much convincing," he said.

After accepting the position, Billings got to work cleaning things up. He quickly saw how much ButcherBox needed him.

"They had zero systems, no inventory control," he said. "Nothing."

Salguero agreed, noting that Billings immediately cut chicken procurement costs by more than half.

"We realized we were getting taken to the cleaners on pricing," Salguero said. "But Mike is a very tough negotiator."

Billings also brought a frugal mindset to ButcherBox, and according to Salguero, he taught the company how to "save a penny here, a nickel there" across the supply chain. Those savings added up over time into significant capital, which ButcherBox could invest in other parts of the business. The company now offers beef, pork, chicken, and salmon to customers, delivering across the entire continental United States.

When Salguero accompanied Billings to meat conferences, he was amazed at how many people knew the former BJ's manager. A steady stream of people came up to shake Billings's hand and talk shop. Salguero and the team gave Billings a nickname at events: "Mayor of Meat Town."

Generational gap

Although Billings's deep industry knowledge benefited ButcherBox, he still had a lot to learn. At BJ's, he sourced meat by calling representatives from Cargill or Tyson. At ButcherBox, he had to visit farmers and ranchers in person, convincing them to work with the company.

"You have to build the supply chain because it doesn't exist," Billings said.

Finding grass-fed farms that could supply year-round or for most of the year was a huge challenge. There were also resource questions: Was it better to spend more money expanding existing suppliers or to find new ones? Convincing farmers to shift to pasture-based methods after years under a different system was equally difficult.

"I've got it down now, but it was a steep learning curve," Billings said.

He also had a lot to learn about data science and online retail. At BJ's, the only product he sold online was premium beef gift boxes ("We didn't really pay much attention to it," Billings said). His previous work relied on coupons and newspaper ads to attract customers, while ButcherBox—like many digital-native brands—used targeted promotions and tracked customers and prospects with fine granularity.

Billings said learning analytics was eye-opening for an old-school meat buyer. Learning to navigate an office full of young startup employees was equally illuminating. Billings didn't point to specific problems but hinted that the environment challenged the vertical authority he was used to at BJ's.

"I used to be the only one making the calls. At BJ's, nobody in meat did anything without checking with me. Here it's a bit..." He trailed off.

Despite the benefits of data science, Billings said his way of doing things still has advantages. He values the human touch, building relationships, and cultivating a reputation as tough but fair and always true to his word. Younger employees, he said, might be more inclined to email or text a supplier rather than pick up the phone.

"I'm not like that," Billings said. "If I have a problem and it's going to take more than 10 lines to write, I'll pick up the phone and call you, because I can probably solve the whole thing in a three-minute conversation instead of going back and forth with 20 messages."

The generational gap points to a broader issue for ButcherBox and the industry as a whole: Mike Billings belongs to a dying breed.

Department staffing has been a challenge for years, said Anne-Marie Roerink, founder and principal of 210 Analytics, who closely follows the industry and writes reports for the Food Marketing Institute, including the annual "Power of Meat." According to a survey her company conducted last year, 89% of retailers said they struggle to find people willing to make meat a career.

"The meat department has struggled for years to find replacements for an aging workforce, whether it's in-store butchers or directors and VPs at the corporate level," Roerink wrote in an email to Grocery Dive. "A quick search on any national job board shows hundreds of open positions for meat department VPs, directors, managers, cutters, or clerks across retailers of all sizes, formats, and regions."

That could be a serious problem for this $67 billion industry. Billings said it worries him and points to a future with fewer full-service meat counters. He said retailers will increasingly rely on pre-packaged meat, even though customer service demand remains high.

At ButcherBox, Salguero hopes Billings will have a successor who can absorb all his valuable industry knowledge. There's a support team in place for now, but no one has yet shown the passion for the trade.

"We haven't really found that person who says, 'I want to do meat my whole life because it's a great career,'" Salguero said.

When Billings eventually decides to retire again, ButcherBox's operations could be affected. But for now, Salguero and the company can breathe a sigh of relief—because the savvy veteran says he has no plans to leave anytime soon. He works four days a week, only one of which is in the office. He's also enjoying building new relationships and adding new product lines, like fully traceable wild-caught scallops.

"I don't have a deadline," Billings said. "I really enjoy what I do, so there's nothing about the work that would make me leave. The bigger question is: when do I want to do nothing?"