How František Kšána found Ambiente: I wanted to do butchery differently than my dad, my goal is to educate people about meat
Taking a stand for quality meat
František, what brought you to Ambiente all those years ago?
Indirectly, it was my mother, who gave me notice from our family butcher shop on the last day of 2011. I was surprised, but I actually welcomed her decision. She wanted me to move on from the place, and in the end she helped me more than I expected. The idea of a family business is a nice thing, it's just that working together in one operation isn't easy, and that's where a lot of similar businesses fail. I struggled with that for a long time. My dad wanted to do the craft this way and not that way, while I had a slightly different idea of butchery.
And what was that?
I had planned that my dad and I would open a small butcher shop with a bistro where people could shop and see how the meat was cut and processed at the same time. And they'd get hungry. Dad didn't want to do that. He was also against it when I suggested that I would like to make sausages from the black-footed pig from Preštice. He told me the same thing that most meat processors would later repeat. He persuaded me that the breed was too fat and that its products would be hard to sell, so we continued to offer meat of ordinary quality in the shop. I could not identify with that. I wanted to move up in the trade and do things better.
How did your plans evolve?
I had all sorts of ideas in my head. I wanted to make Prague ham, among other things. For a while I considered approaching Mr Schwarzenberg. He came to our shop regularly and I promised him support, which I couldn't find in our butcher's shop. Then I read a column in Mladá fronta about a certain Tomáš Karpíšek from Ambiente buying the trademark for Prague ham, and that's when I thought I could work with him.
What happened next?
In the meantime, I got a trademark for Preštice pork and I tried to offer Preštice pork to companies and various meat processors, but they all discouraged me. One day Aleš Karpíšek and Radek Pecko, then chefs from Pizza Nuova, stopped by our shop and asked what I was doing and how. And then the restaurant Čestr opened and one of our customers took me there for dinner. Gradually I found out what Ambiente was doing, but I still had my own factory and butchery institute in front of me.
Butchers' Institute?
That's right. I figured I'd start a butchery institute to educate people about meat. I even had a logo and business cards made. Then I found a space for rent on Navratilova Street. I painted a picture of how I would process meat there and distribute it to butcher shops and restaurants. I was going to buy an old van for about a hundred thousand crowns, that was all I had, and I thought that as soon as I made some money I would open a shop in the former butcher's shop right across the street from the factory on Navrátilova Street. I hoped I could do it on my own. But in the end I approached Vlast Lacina, who was still the chef in Čestr at that time.
Why did you approach him?
I came across an interview with Vlasta in Gurmet magazine and I had the feeling that we were looking in the same direction. We arranged a meeting right there in Čestr. I told him about the prosciutto, how I carve meat, and we agreed that I would do a training session on salsiccia production for him, Tomáš Karpíšek and a few employees. More meetings with various people from Ambiente followed, until I met Tomáš. We sat together in Pastacaffé in Vodičkova Street and I drew on paper my dream of a butcher's shop. He told me that he was going to New York for inspiration and if I wanted to go too. And that was it! In April 2012, I joined Amaso.
I assume you were hired as a butcher.
You're assuming correctly. Vlasta Lacina and Radek Chaloupka were great cooks and they knew they wanted to age meat, but they didn't have butchery experience. I, on the other hand, lacked knowledge of the kitchen, and at first I had no idea what aged beef meant. Actually, we were a great match. Every Monday morning I went to the abattoir in Přibram, where we had the beef slaughtered and even cut up. I supervised the cutting and vacuum-packing of the meat, which we sold to restaurants during the week. Alongside that, I would go and buy the offcuts for myself until at Amaso we agreed that it made sense to go into it all together and focus on both beef and pork, and sausage making.
And two years later, the butcher shop opened in Dlouhá.
At that point I became the head butcher at Naše maso, but I never completely left Amaso. Once a week, I used to go to our processing plant in Jenč to check what was being produced and whether, for example, the English bacon was cut correctly. But I was sitting with one butt on two chairs and we all felt that I should rather be doing what I do best, which is telling stories, educating and co-inventing new projects. And that's what happened. In 2022, I returned full time to Amaso, where I am in charge of representing the company as well as legislation and education.
Are you referring to training apprentices or customers?
It doesn't matter. I don't care if I'm running a course for students or talking over the counter in a butcher shop. What matters is getting people excited about the craft and what we do at Amaso. We've always wanted to sell meat and educate the public at the same time. When a customer came into the store, I tried to give them some extra information so that they would know for future reference that beef from an ox is not the same as beef from a bull, and they wouldn't wonder why we add praganda to our sausages. At Naše maso we have the opportunity to "educate" our regulars and show people that we believe in what we create, because then they will too. But over the years, I've come to understand that at Amaso we have a mission that takes more than serving one person.
Part of that mission is education. What topic do you think deserves discussion?
Our craft is facing a situation where small butcher shops are disappearing globally. Meat processing is moving to large-scale factories and supermarkets, where machines are replacing human labour and crushing smaller artisanal businesses. Those that survive so far often slip into a quality similar to that of the supermarkets, although they claim to still work traditionally and honestly. In short, economics has trumped quality and our market is flooded with products that have an economic quality: they look quite decent and can be sold at the lowest possible price. The quality of meat and craftsmanship has been relegated to second place.
How do you feel about this at Amaso?
We are continuing in the way we started years ago, and we are not afraid to speak out about what quality and commitment to working with Czech raw materials means to us. Meat consumption in the Czech Republic is declining, which is positive, but unfortunately it is declining especially for beef, which has good nutritional value, as well as venison and fish. By contrast, we are eating more and more chicken and pork, which often comes from large-scale farms or from abroad. Moreover, legislation allows products to be sold as 'Czech', even though up to 30% may be foreign raw materials. I would like this information to reach the wider public so that people can freely decide what they want to eat and what they will support.
Are you registering in Amaso that Czechs are eating less meat?
Yes and no. We follow the statistics, but also the growing demand, which motivates us to increase volumes. At the same time, however, we are also managing to increase the quality of meat, thanks to breeders who breed animals according to our requirements and understand that we don't just want a crossbreed, but a crossbreed from a certain lineage, with a certain conformation and fatness. At the moment we are about to introduce a new quality rating system which is used in America, Japan, New Zealand and Australia. Our aim is for Czech butchers to produce the best Czech meat and for the Czech consumer to accept higher prices for honest local food. All our efforts are worth it, even if we only affect a small percentage of our society.
Where did your dream of a butchers' institute go?
I'm partly fulfilling it now at the UM Education Center, where I run my classes for the public, and I also do workshops for apprentices. In the future, however, we would like to create an association that would provide special training for butchers, not only at Ambiente. We need to improve and learn from each other so that we have something to pass on to the younger generations.
When does a butcher become a master butcher?
When he stands firmly by what he knows, yet can admit that he doesn't know everything, and is willing to learn. There are a lot of things I don't understand as well as I'd like to, and I can't imagine we're doing anything other than being an honorary butcher and a prosecutor at Amaso right now. We're always learning new things and trying to share knowledge with breeders to make meat and sausages even better. There is absolutely nothing missing on the shelves of Czech butcher shops. What we need is not a wider range, but higher quality. Naše maso is consistently the most popular for ham, sausages and bacon. This only reinforces my belief that we butchers do not need to look for new tastes. We just need to appreciate the ones we remember from our childhood and learn to produce Prague ham that so good, customers will not want any other.
If you were fifteen again and had to choose another profession, what would it be?
When I was a kid, I dreamed of being a pilot like my grandfather. I remember him taking me to airports to see airplanes or looking at airplanes in the display case at home. But then I tasted a hot dog from the smoker for the first time, and it was a done deal. I longed to be a butcher. I think, and I hope a little bit, that I will be at Amaso for many more years, where I can work with people like Vlasta Lacina Jiroš, Radek Chaloupka, Tomáš Karpíšek or Roman Frencl. One person can do a lot in life, but when he joins with other "fools" he can achieve several times more.
