One might assemble a cow piece by piece at Glendale’s Sevan Meat Market. Precision-cut steaks sit in neat rows. Entire ft relaxation tippy-toed, perpetually frozen in pre-pirouette. Packs of brains stay on the shelf under, flat and frozen. That is how I think about my mind takes care of a couple of hours of scrolling TikTok, and but I really feel sure to it, as a result of everyone seems to be on TikTok nowadays, even my favourite meat market.
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Vanessa Anderson is the Grocery Goblin, on a mission to discover neighborhood grocery shops all through Southern California.
Sevan Meat Market’s social media movies — conceived by proprietor Hrach Marukyan, his son Serop and supervisor Norvan Simonian — inform an Armenian American story constructed on beef, a narrative of the outdated and new, of adaptation to a quickly altering world. And their rising viewers of now practically 60,000 Instagram followers is eagerly tuning in.
In a single current video, three ladies with flowing hair and model-esque options sit close to an old-timey effectively. It’s sunny outdoors, and so they’re carrying cowboy hats. They wave to somebody off digicam, batting their eyelashes and guffawing to one another. One shrugs and removes her flannel to disclose a fragile white sundress. Is that this AI-generated?
Earlier than I’ve time to ponder additional, it’s revealed who they’re waving at, a cowboy with a horse. One of many ladies approaches him. She’s holding two tomahawk steaks, sealed in plastic. She factors to the steaks, bites her lip, then flashes him a thumbs-up. He’s impressed. She climbs on his horse, and so they experience off into the space. The graphic onscreen reads “Sevan Meat Market.”
I first realized of Sevan Meat Market at chef Diadié Diombana’s pop-up at Melody Wine Bar in Virgil Village two years in the past.
Sevan “was his first stop off the plane from Paris,” my eating accomplice, personal chef Gwendolyn Fogel, advised me. “I had to take him.”
The second Sevan Meat Market location, on Colorado Avenue in Glendale, opened in 2009. Prospects of the second-generation-owned Armenian butcher store love the steaks — and the Instagrams posts.
Later, I’d notice it in my cellphone as a suggestion from different cooks. “Easy place for lamb,” one notice mentioned. “Good quality, good price,” mentioned one other.
The primary time I confirmed up, I used to be shocked by the modernity. I anticipated an old-school Armenian butcher, not a modern black exterior with a Wagyu decal on the window. The market’s Instagram was equally surprising. Excessive, attractive and fully absurd 30-second clips starring probably the most lavish of Sevan’s choices. At first look one may dismiss the content material as lowbrow, sensational clickbait. However Sevan’s social media technique holds a mirror to widespread tradition multiple may suppose.
Sevan’s Instagram is sort of like a glance again via the historical past of viral content material itself. The market posted its first video in 2020, depicting a field of Waygu being opened within the now-ancient Instagram Boomerang format. In 2022, an aerial time-lapse of a tomahawk being minimize as was the style in these days. In early 2024, we’re served a feast of recipe movies, for cheese lula kebab and osso bucco sandwiches. In late 2024, the cowboy movies premiere, tons of them. Just like the type of a duanju, a vertical film format popularized in China that’s damaged into the American market with quick movies equivalent to “Fake Married to My Billionaire CEO” and “Doctor Boss Is My Baby Daddy,” they’re racy, tedious, laugh-out-loud and have seen a 992% enhance in downloads between 2023 and 2024.
Shut-ups of the Wagyu, left, and beef chuck roll at Sevan Meat Market.
A aspect of Sevan’s cowboy movies to not be ignored is the position of the meat inside a hyper-specific context. Gone are the steaks in opposition to white backdrops in weekly flyers of the previous, these steaks might be anyplace. These steaks exist on a lush farm, they’re rugged, masculine and beloved by stunning ladies. These steaks are prime quality. They’re luxurious, they’re … American?
Beef, lengthy synonymous with American exceptionalism, has a historical past of using advertising ways that play on beliefs of custom, ubiquity and household. Take the enduring Beef: It’s What’s For Dinner marketing campaign from the Nineteen Nineties and later adverts like Highly effective Beefscapes from 2008, which not-so-subtly insist on an America constructed on beef.
Sevan’s movies place beef as a luxurious merchandise, a nod to the market’s requirements and a intelligent technique contemplating groceries is the highest class Gen Z and millennials are prepared to splurge on.
Supervisor Norvan Simonian says he began noticing new faces within the store, a rise in gross sales and prospects touring from San Diego and Orange County for Sevan’s steaks.
“It’s not just me; my colleagues and I put all our ideas together,” Sevan’s supervisor and video star Simonian tells me on the store. When requested about his inspiration, he merely mentioned, “Instagram and YouTube.”
Manufacturing takes place at Sevan proprietor Hrach Marukyan’s cousin’s ranch in Springville, Calif., simply north of Bakersfield. He then introduces me to Hamlet Saturyan, the cousin in query. Saturyan makes the three-hour drive from Springville Ranch each week with a truck stuffed with grapevine wooden.
“I bring it for them to sell because it’s good for barbecue. It’s traditional and gives the barbecue more flavor,” Saturyan says.
He tells me about Springfield. “All of Sequoia National Park reminds me of Armenia. We don’t have the giant trees, but the mountains, the rivers and the lakes.”
Simonian’s instincts proved fruitful. As his movies racked up views and shares, he began noticing new faces within the store, a rise in gross sales and prospects touring from San Diego and Orange County to get their fingers on a Sevan steak.
“They even take our meat to different countries. Like … Armenia!” he says with a smile. “When we stop posting videos for like a week, [our customers] are like, ‘OK … we’re waiting for your new videos, where are they?’”
Later, I go to the unique Sevan Meat location on East Broadway and discover that old-school Armenian butcher I anticipated to stroll into the primary time. The peach-colored stone tiles on the partitions resemble the marbling on steak. Rows of plastic cow collectible figurines stand perched on cabinets above the butchers, who chatter away in Armenian to a crowd of shoppers, older than these on the new store, pointing at lamb chops and complete chickens.
At Sevan Meat Market’s first location on Broadway. “We didn’t advertise at all before this,” Serop Marukyan says. “It was all word of mouth.”
Each shops carry the identical product, they’re owned and operated by the identical folks, and their separate social media accounts are the identical, for probably the most half. The newer Colorado Avenue location has about 50,000 extra followers, although; a fleet of newer, hipper automobiles within the parking zone; and a clientele who may simply splurge on Waygu tonight and wouldn’t bat an eye fixed on the time period “doomscroll.”
The outdated and the brand new Sevan are a neat pair, and a not-so-subtle reminder that the small distance between first- and second-generation immigrants can typically really feel like a chasm. The outdated Sevan opened in 2005, the brand new 4 years later. They’re a three-minute drive away from each other and on the similar time a world aside.
“We didn’t advertise at all before this.” Serop Marukyan says. “It was all word of mouth.”
After I ask Simonian about this change, he smiles and says, “We have to go with the new generation.”
