Radius Butcher & Grocery
Whole animals come in and Kevin Fishner's rule is that the seasons write the menu rather than the buyer does.1
Why go
It opened on 12 March 2025 in the room Salt and Time had held, and it buys from the same farms that shop did.2 Peaceful Pork and Greener Pastures Chicken are the two a Salt and Time regular will recognize on sight, alongside Trosi Farms, Mill-King and Peeler Farms.2 The team spent a year visiting farms before opening, and the sourcing rule is regenerative practice: pastured livestock, cover crops, compost fertilizer, low or no till.2 Produce, dairy and seafood come mostly from Texas farms, and the drinks shelf is Texas beer, wine and cider.2 Recipe cards are written to whatever is in season at the counter that week.2 Open 10am to 8pm, seven days.2
Order this / avoid
- Ask what came in whole this week and buy off that animal. Whole-animal butchery is the stated policy and it is what makes the odd cuts available at all.2 Note the limit: Odam reports that unlike Salt and Time before it, Radius does not cure its own meats and does not serve food to eat in.1
- Wild-caught Gulf seafood is on the same counter, which is rarer in an Austin butcher than the beef is.1
- Peaceful Pork and Greener Pastures Chicken if you want the exact producers Salt and Time carried.2
- A Texas beer or cider off the shelf to drink with whatever you just bought to cook.2
- Vegan protein alternatives are stocked if half your table does not eat meat.2
- Avoid: arriving expecting lunch. The old restaurant floor is now grocery retail.2
What locals & experts say
- CultureMap Austin reported the opening on 11 March 2025, with the sourcing list and the shop's own policy.2
- Joe Saenz, general manager and head butcher, verbatim:
Whole animal butchery is a core philosophical belief of mine. There's a purity to knowing exactly where your food comes from, and honoring every part of the animal.
He goes on:There's a great responsibility in harvesting an animal, and it's our passion to honor the entire sacrifice by highlighting and elevating every part of the animal.
2 - Community Impact covered it again in April 2025, on the seasonal produce and meat range.3
- Matthew Odam, the Austin American-Statesman's restaurant critic, on what makes the handover unusual, verbatim:
In a rare move of a specialty operator taking over the space of a previous business operating in a similar capacity, Radius Butcher & Grocery opens Thursday at 1912 E. Seventh St.
1 - Owner Kevin Fishner on why it exists, verbatim:
I love cooking, but I started to hate going to the grocery store. The produce is bland. The stores are too big. Marketing buzzwords hide real farming practices. There's too much processed food.
He came to this from marketing and finance and describes the model as farm stands in New Jersey,letting seasons be the menu planner.
1 - What closed the shop before it: Ben Runkle and butcher Bryan Butler opened Salt and Time on East Seventh in 2013, and Runkle told the Statesman in 2024 that a six-figure investment in a St Elmo Market site that never opened was part of the financial strain that ended it.1
- The city critic has reported on this shop, and I haven't found anyone who has judged the meat. Odam's piece is a bylined opening report, and CultureMap's and Community Impact's are the same shape.
Good to know
- Hygiene: record found and current. Austin Public Health has the kitchen at Radius Butcher & Grocery LLC, 1912 E 7th St Ste A, scoring 93 on 18 March 2026. That is the only inspection on file, which is what you expect for a business that opened in March 2025. Austin's failing threshold is below 70.6
- The city's permit record confirms the handover. Austin Public Health still lists Salt & Time Butcher Shop and Salumeria at the same Suite A, flagged out of business, and their wine shop at Suite D, and those scores stay with them.6
- Two published addresses disagree. CultureMap prints 1213 East 7th St, while Austin Public Health and Matthew Odam both print 1912 E 7th St. Use 1912.1
Verdict
could-visit — The rung was re-stated on 8 August 2026. Radius Butcher & Grocery took Salt and Time's East 7th Street room, opened 12 March 2025 by Kevin Fishner, who came to it from marketing and finance because he had come to hate supermarkets. It buys from the same farms the old shop did, Peaceful Pork, Greener Pastures Chicken, Trosi Farms, Mill-King, Peeler Farms, plus Pure Pastures and the Refugee Collective, and it runs whole-animal butchery with head butcher Joe Saenz on the block. Wild-caught Gulf seafood sits on the same counter. What it is not, on the city critic's own account, is the shop Salt and Time was: no house-cured meats and nothing to eat in. The meat itself remains unjudged.