How Do You Ship A Turducken?

When 31-year-old Danny Catullo took over the butcher shop started by his grandfather, he had the same thought that many digitally savvy young adults do when taking charge of a family business: how can I take this online and really rake in sales?

Bloomberg Businessweek explains that the company found its niche in selling things that you can’t find in every local supermarket: regional specialties like the turducken. Yes, the turducken, the holiday dish of meat-stuffed meat that everyone jokes about but that you probably haven’t tried. At this butcher, it consists of a deboned chicken and duck stuffed inside a turkey, which has its breastbone removed in order to make space for the other animals.

Once you’ve managed to sell a turducken to someone across the country, how do you get it to them? A 15-pound stuffed turducken sells for about $80, and ships packed in about 8 pounds of dry ice. Sales took off a few years later, after Pepto-Bismol aired a turducken-related commercial.

The butcher shop used a $5,000 prize from a contest held by FedEx to work on shipping solutions for sending meat all over the country, including to Alaska and Hawaii.

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