Armando Flocchini Sr immigrated from Italy around the turn of the century. His parents made their way across the country to Northern California where his uncles had opened a successful dairy farm. It was there milking cows at the crack of dawn that his legendary work ethic gave rise. Soon after he made his way to the big city of San Francisco and worked as an apprentice butcher at the Durham Meat Company on Harrison Street, founded in 1890. It was there that he found a home and with a loan from his soon to be mother-in-law, bought the company.
Armando and Lena Flocchini had three kids, Armando Jr (Bud) , Richard and Virginia. At one point in time all three children followed their father into the family meat business. But it was Bud and Rich who stayed on and built the company into a multi generation operation with multiple locations and in 1965 a 55,000 acre Bison ranch in Wyoming, aptly named The Durham Ranch.
At present there are several members of the Third and Fourth generation of Flocchini’ s working and carrying on the family legacy that Armando started nearly 100 years ago.
Having a deep respect for the craft of butchery and the ranchers and farmers who we depend on, along with a deep love of food, Bud’s son Chris and his wife Joanne decided to pursue a lifelong fantasy to reinvent the neighborhood butcher shop.
Eric, a lifelong artisan in the art of butchery, had always wanted to open a retail store focused solely on offering a first-class experience in a space that paid homage to the craft yet was not intimidating. Eric is the walking embodiment of the neighborhood butcher, kind, friendly, knowledgeable, and always anxious to create another fiercely loyal customer, because they know he truly cares about them and will only serve them the best quality they deserve.
When Chris and Eric got together and discussed their visions about creating a old school / new school butcher shop in Reno, Armando & Sons Butcher Shop and Fine Foods was born.
Together, we hope to honor our ancestors through this venture by providing the very best of the neighborhood butcher: the finest meat and seafood, dry aged beef, craft burgers and sausages and in our pantry, the very best of all the things we love about food. We do all of this with the same passion and vigor that Armando and his sons lived their lives, in Italian we call it Con Brio!