I’m talking about at the grocery store, not at a butchers shop, where everything is behind the window. Sometimes I just want enough boneless chicken breast for the meal at hand, and it would be nice if I could just ask for two pounds of chicken from the counter person instead of rooting around in the prewrapped packages for something that approximates what I want in weight or settling for the 4 pound Val-U-Pak. I’m sure more people are buying chicken than whole catfish, but they seem to have room for those, so I can’t think it’s just a space consideration. Why no chicken?
Just a guess,
Possibly because of the salmonella risk that raw chicken has it has stricter handling rules? Unlike beef and fish that can be handled and exposed to other things.
My grocery store’s butcher counter has chicken available all the time, in addition to the pre-wrapped stuff in the self-service section.
At Publix whatever you want they’ll get you, doesn’t matter what it is. Sometimes they do that just by breaking up already-out-there-packages, and sometimes they do it by sawing up an animal back there.
Ditto here. The butcher’s department here has a big, long case with ice where the seafood goes, and a shorter, iceless one with beef, pork, and chicken breasts.
The former two’s selections vary from day to day. Ground beef with two choices of fat content is always available as is bacon. The rest is catch-as-can, generally steaks (rib-eye, New York, top sirloin, and petit sirloin being the most popular), bulk pork sausage, and some kind of pork chop. The only thing offered there chicken-wise are skinless breasts, either intact or sliced into fajita strips.
Naturally, there is a much bigger self-serve case where you can go for packaged meat, including the rest of the chicken, either cut up or whole, and that has a bigger selection.