Schnucks hires employees from burned meat market in Ferguson

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Dilip Vishwanat

Sam's Meat Market and More on Aug. 12. The business was burned following the grand jury's decision Nov. 24.

Ben Unglesbee

Reporter- St. Louis Business Journal

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With the businesses that burned in last week's riots, so went many jobs.

Like many people, Ed Meyer, vice president of meat and seafood at Schnuck Markets Inc., watched helplessly as businesses in Ferguson were destroyed following the announcement of a grand jury's decision not to indict former Ferguson Police Officer Darren Wilson in the shooting death of unarmed teenager Michael Brown.

Meyer and his colleagues in the Schnucks meat division decided soon after that they wanted to do something to help those hurt economically by the riots. They came to an idea that seemed simple enough: Hire the employees of one of the destroyed businesses, Sam's Meat Market and More.

"Everyone watched the devastation (last) Monday night," Meyer said. "We all grew up in little meat markets all over." Although the company wasn't hiring workers to staff its meat departments, Meyer said he thought it was something they could do to help their peers in the industry hurt by the destruction in Ferguson.

But finding the employees and hiring them proved more difficult than coming up with the idea. Sam's Meat Market, at 9241 West Florissant Ave., and owned by Mohamad Yaacoub, was set on fire by rioters the night of the grand jury announcement — after having been looted and damaged in August following Brown's death — and is among the buildings the city of Ferguson has listed as an "unsafe structure."

Meyer's first idea was to go to the site of the store that Tuesday. But police, with many buildings still smoking and the area essentially one big crime scene, had blocked off West Florissant to traffic.

Meyer says he refused to give up. "It became kind of a personal mission," he said. Eventually he was put in contact with Yaccoub's lawyer, Jay Kanzler, who has been assisting the Sam's Meat Market owner with filing insurance claims, getting aid and managing other headaches that have come since unrest first erupted in August.

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