Every Brooklynite has a discount card for his friendly neighborhood coffee shop — buy 10 coffees, get one free. Finally, this vital customer service has come to live poultry.
“I got customers that come everyday, so I wanted to make it fair for them,” said Carlo Formisano, the manager of La Pera Brothers live poultry market in Dyker Heights.
The punchcard gimmick is limited to chickens, but customers will find plenty of other animals ripe for the picking: Quail, pigeons, lamb, goats, rabbits and turkey. The occasional anxiety-ridden duck also wanders the slaughterhouse floor.
The 53-year-old La Pera Brothers is not for the sensitive carnivore, but it is for anyone looking for truly fresh meat (the slaughtered animal flesh is still warm as you carry it out to your car).
“There is nothing like a fresh-killed chicken,” Formisano said. “If it’s not fresh, it’s not the best.”
And don’t even get Formisano started on store-bought birds, which he says is so foul that he’s never eaten it. “The immigrants understand,” Formisano said, “But Americans don’t. They’re too used to buying from a box.
“People from Africa, Asia, Bangladesh, Ecuador, Muslims — we kill for everybody.”
La Pera Brothers [1373 61st St. at 14th Avenue in Dyker Heights, (718) 438-2577]. Closed Monday.
