Tydel Foods Meat Shop

Butchers are one of the few food shops where every useful question is really a question about supply, and in Chilliwack that has an unusually good answer. The municipality holds something over 17,000 hectares of farmland and more than 700 farms, and agriculture accounts for close to 30 per cent of local economic activity. This is the largest dairy producing area in British Columbia, with poultry and greenhouse growing behind it, and there are 25 plus food processing companies in the area. The distance between an animal, a processor and a counter can be very short here in a way it is not in most cities.

The supermarkets in Chilliwack are all national and none of them appear on this site, which leaves the independent half of the grocery trade: farm stores selling their own beef, dairy and eggs, greengrocers, butchers, bulk and health food shops, and the roadside stands out through Greendale, Yarrow and Rosedale that open with the corn in August and close when it is done. That half is much the smaller of the two and much the more interesting, and an owner-run meat counter downtown belongs squarely in it.