Butcher Job Description: Duties, Responsibilities, Template & Pay (2026)
A butcher breaks primals into the cuts a customer will buy, keeps yield and shrink under control, and knows the product well enough to sell it. It is a genuine trade with a shrinking pool — about 143,100 butchers and meat cutters nationally, growing at 1–2% — which makes the posting a recruiting document rather than a listing. This page has a butcher job description template you can copy, what the trade pays, and what a skilled cutter reads a posting for.
Butcher or meat cutter? Both, and say both
BLS counts them as one occupation — butchers and meat cutters — and in practice the words split by setting. Grocery and retail usually say meat cutter; independent shops, restaurants and specialty operations usually say butcher. Candidates search both, so put one in the title and the other in the opening lines.
The more useful distinction for a posting is what the job actually breaks. A cutter working from case-ready or sub-primals in a supermarket does different work from someone breaking whole carcasses in a shop that dry-ages, makes sausage and does whole-animal work. Say which. An experienced butcher reads that in one line and knows whether the job is worth a conversation.
What a butcher does
O*NET describes the occupation as preparing consumer-sized portions of meat for retail, cutting and trimming various meats, wrapping and pricing product, arranging displays, receiving and inspecting deliveries, and maintaining inventory.
In a working meat department that is five things.
Breaking and cutting. Primals and sub-primals to spec, portioning, trimming to a fat standard, grinding, and knowing the difference a quarter inch makes to yield across a day.
Yield and shrink. The commercial heart of the job. Cut yield, trim use, markdown discipline and rotation decide whether the department makes money, and a good cutter is worth several points of margin.
Case and product. Merchandising the case, rotating for freshness, wrapping, labelling and pricing accurately, and building the display that sells the higher-margin cuts.
Food safety. Temperature control, sanitation, HACCP where it applies, allergen and cross-contamination control, and the records that prove it. This is regulated work and the posting should treat it as such.
Customers. In service-counter operations the butcher advises on cuts, quantities and cooking, and takes special orders. That is a sales skill and it should be named rather than assumed.
Butcher job description template
Copy this into your ATS or job board, replace the bracketed fields, and delete what does not apply. It is written for a retail meat department or independent shop; the customization section covers grocery, whole-animal butchery, processing plants, restaurants and wholesale.
Job title
Butcher [/ Meat Cutter] — [Shop, department or plant], [Company name], [City, ST]
Summary
[Company name] is hiring a [butcher / meat cutter] for our [operation type] in [city]. We work from [whole carcasses / primals / sub-primals / case-ready] across [beef, pork, lamb, poultry], cutting about [000] lbs a day with a team of [0]. [We dry-age, make sausage in house and do whole-animal work / The department is service counter plus self-serve case.] Shift is [days and exact hours], [00] hours a week, [early starts at [time]]. Pay is [$00.00–$00.00] an hour depending on experience, paid [weekly]. [All knives, steels and PPE supplied.]
Responsibilities
- Break [carcasses / primals / sub-primals] into retail cuts to specification and yield standard
- Portion, trim, grind and prepare product for the case and for special orders
- Wrap, label and price accurately; maintain weight and pricing integrity
- Merchandise and rotate the case; manage markdowns to protect margin without waste
- Receive and inspect deliveries for temperature, quality and count
- Maintain temperature control, sanitation and [HACCP] records
- Sharpen and maintain knives, saws, grinders and slicers; follow lock-out procedure when cleaning
- Manage inventory and tell [the manager] what to order before it runs out
- [Serve customers at the counter: advise on cuts, quantities and cooking, and take special orders]
Requirements
- [00] years cutting experience, or completion of a meat-cutting programme / apprenticeship
- Able to work [the shift], including [early mornings and weekends]
- Able to work in a cold environment at [00]°F for a full shift and lift [50] lbs
- Knife skills and saw competence, with the safety habits that go with them
- [Food handler certification, or obtain within [30] days — we pay]
Preferred
- Whole-animal or carcass-breaking experience
- [Sausage making, dry-ageing, charcuterie or smokehouse experience]
- [HACCP training]
- Service-counter and special-order experience
- [Spanish and English]
Pay and benefits
- [$00.00–$00.00] an hour, reviewed at [90] days and [12] months
- [Premium for whole-animal or advanced cutting skills]
- [We supply knives, steels, mesh gloves, aprons and boots — and we pay for sharpening]
- [Health, dental and vision from day [00]], [401(k) with match], [PTO and paid holidays]
- [Staff discount on product], [paid HACCP and food safety training]
- [Early finish — the department closes at [time] and you are out by [time]]
How to apply
[Apply here / text CUTTER to 00000 / come in and ask for [name]]. We reply within [24] hours and will happily put you on a paid cutting trial rather than run a long interview.
Requirements: what is required, what is preferred, and what costs you applicants
This is a shrinking trade: 143,100 people, 1–2% growth, about 16,900 openings a year, with the skilled end concentrated in older workers. Almost every experienced cutter is employed, which means the posting is competing for someone who has a job rather than filtering a queue.
| Requirement | What to know |
|---|---|
| Years of experience | Reasonable for a skilled cutting role, but state the work rather than the number: "can break a beef hindquarter and hold a 12% trim standard" is checkable in a trial and tells a candidate exactly whether they qualify. Better still, run the trial — this is a trade where thirty minutes with a knife tells you more than any interview. |
| Training programme or apprenticeship | Real and worth preferring. If you will train an apprentice, say so prominently — the trade renews itself slowly and shops that train are the ones with cutters in five years. |
| Cold environment | A genuine condition of the job. State the temperature and how much of the shift is spent in it. This is the single most common omission in meat department postings. |
| Physical requirements | Concrete: lifting 50 lbs of primal, standing on a hard floor all shift, repetitive cutting motion, cold, and the hazards of saws and grinders. |
| Knives and equipment | Many cutters own their knives and are attached to them. Saying that you supply knives, steels, mesh gloves and sharpening is a small cost and a clear signal about how the department is run. |
| Food safety certification | Often required locally. Offer to pay and give a window. |
| Early starts | Meat departments start early. Say the actual time rather than "early mornings" — a 4am start and a 6am start are different jobs. |
Butcher duties, written for a posting
Describe the operation. Whether you work from carcasses, primals or case-ready, the species, the volume in pounds a day, the team size, whether there is a service counter, and whether the shop does anything beyond cutting — sausage, smoking, dry-ageing, charcuterie. Those extras are the reason a good butcher chooses one shop over another, and they are rarely mentioned.
Say what the yield standard is and whether the cutter is accountable for it. Skilled cutters are proud of yield and are happy to be measured on it; being measured on it without being told the standard is a different experience.
Keep the list to eight or nine lines, ordered by how much of the day each takes, and include the sanitation and records. They are a large part of a regulated job and naming them signals a department that will pass an inspection.
How to customize it by operation
Grocery and supermarket meat department
Say whether you cut from primals or merchandise case-ready, because that is the difference between a trade job and a stocking job to the candidate. Name the case size, the service counter arrangement and the shift. Chains compete well here on benefits, hours and progression to meat department manager — say all three.
Independent and whole-animal butchery
Your advantage is the craft: whole animals, dry-ageing, sausage, house charcuterie, relationships with farms. Lead with it. This is the one segment where a cutter will take less money for better work, and the posting has to prove the work is better.
Processing and packing plants
Production cutting at line speed, cold rooms, PPE and strict food safety. Be honest about the pace and the temperature, and say the shift pattern and differential. This is a different job from retail butchery and should read like one.
Restaurant and hospitality butchery
In-house breaking for a kitchen, portioning to chef specification, and usually a small team. Say the covers, the menu style and who the butcher works with. Kitchen hours apply — say them.
Wholesale and food service supply
Volume portioning to customer specification, early starts, and delivery deadlines. Say the order pattern and the finish time, because finishing early is a real benefit in this segment and it is usually unstated.
What it costs to reach butchers and meat cutters on social
Hourly customer-facing roles are the cheapest audience in our 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark: across 181 retail and corporate campaigns the median cost per applicant was $8.58, with a volume-blended figure of $3.66 and a 26% apply rate — the highest of any sector. Across all 891 managed campaigns the median was $13.88 and the cheapest decile $2.91.
At those numbers the media cost is almost never what stops the role being filled. Across the benchmark, campaigns converting over 20% of clicks paid a median $4.41 an applicant and those under 10% paid $53.77 — a twelvefold difference driven by the posting and the application form, not the auction. Three questions on the form and a same-day callback is the whole optimisation. For a skilled trade inside a retail sector, the practical implication is to widen the geography rather than raise the budget: the audience is small, so a tight radius exhausts quickly and frequency doubles the cost per applicant.
Staffing the department or the kitchen? See the food production worker, cook and stocker job descriptions, and frontline recruiting for the hiring side.
Writing the ad version
The description is the document. The advertisement is read on a phone by somebody who has other options at a similar rate. It needs the rate, what the shop breaks, the shift including the start time, and what you supply — in the first three lines. Our campaign data puts the best-converting length at 201–400 words, and for a role like this the shorter end works.
Three or four questions on the form, then call the same day. Every extra field costs completions, and the cutter you want has applied somewhere else this morning.
What butchers earn
Butchers and meat cutters had a median of $19.30 an hour, $40,140 a year in 2025, across about 143,100 people, with roughly 16,900 openings a year and 1–2% projected growth — slower than average.
| Comparison role | Median pay (2025) | Employed | Openings per year |
|---|---|---|---|
| Butchers and meat cutters | $19.30/hr · $40,140 | 143,100 | ~16,900 |
| Stockers and order fillers | $17.95/hr · $37,330 | 2,764,800 | ~472,300 |
| Cashiers | $15.81/hr · $32,880 | 3,106,300 | ~521,300 |
Inside a grocery store, a butcher earns about $1.35 an hour more than a stocker and $3.49 more than a cashier — and the skill takes years to build rather than days. That is a narrow premium for a genuine trade, and it is the structural reason the pool is shrinking: the work is harder and colder than the alternatives in the same building for a differential most people would not cross the car park for.
Which gives an employer two honest options. Pay a real premium for skill and say the number, or commit to training and say that instead. What does not work is advertising for an experienced cutter at close to the stocking rate, which describes most of the postings in this category and explains why they sit open.
Frequently asked questions
What does a butcher do?
A butcher breaks carcasses, primals or sub-primals into retail cuts to specification, portions, trims and grinds product, wraps, labels and prices it, merchandises and rotates the case, receives and inspects deliveries, maintains temperature control, sanitation and food safety records, sharpens and maintains knives and saws, and in service-counter operations advises customers on cuts and takes special orders.
Is a butcher the same as a meat cutter?
BLS counts them as one occupation. In practice the word varies by setting — grocery and retail usually say meat cutter, while independent shops and specialty operations say butcher. Since candidates search both, a posting should carry one in the title and the other in the opening lines.
How much do butchers make?
Butchers and meat cutters had a median of $19.30 an hour, or $40,140 a year, in 2025. Inside a grocery store that is about $1.35 an hour above a stocker and $3.49 above a cashier — a narrow premium for a skill that takes years to build, which is a large part of why the trade is not growing.
What qualifications does a butcher need?
No universal credential — O*NET reports 70% of positions requiring a high school diploma or equivalent. What matters is knife and saw competence, yield discipline and food safety practice, usually built through a meat-cutting programme, an apprenticeship or years on a block. A food handler certification is commonly required locally.
What should a butcher job description include?
What the operation breaks — carcasses, primals, sub-primals or case-ready — the species, pounds a day, team size, whether there is a service counter, any specialty work such as sausage, smoking or dry-ageing, the exact shift including the start time, the temperature of the cutting room, the pay rate and any skill premium, and what equipment you supply.
Is butchery a dying trade?
Shrinking rather than dying. BLS projects 1–2% growth through 2034 with about 16,900 openings a year across 143,100 people, and much of the retail work has moved toward case-ready product. The skilled end — whole-animal work, specialty and service counters — is where demand holds up and where employers report the most difficulty hiring.
Should a butcher job posting mention the cold?
Yes, with the actual temperature and how much of the shift is spent in it. It is the most commonly omitted condition in meat department postings and one of the most common reasons a new hire does not last the month. Stating it filters accurately and costs you only the applications you would have lost anyway.
Why is it hard to hire butchers?
Because the trade takes years to learn, the pool is small and barely growing, and the pay premium over stocking and cashiering in the same building is only a dollar or two. Employers who fill the role either pay a real premium for skill and say the number, or commit to training an apprentice — advertising for an experienced cutter at close to the stocking rate is what leaves these roles open for months.
Other job description templates
Hiring butchers and meat cutters?
The description is the document. Reaching a small, employed, shrinking trade is the job. That is what we run.
Wage, employment, projection and task descriptions for butchers and meat cutters (SOC 51-3021): O*NET OnLine, republishing U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics May 2025 OEWS wage data and BLS employment projections. Cashier comparison: BLS Occupational Outlook Handbook, Cashiers. Cost-per-applicant, apply-rate and frequency figures: Boostpoint 2026 Social Job Advertising Benchmark, 891 campaigns and 1,334 campaign-months.