Jason Powers - butcher

Jason joined the Left Bank Team as a full-time butcher in the fall of 2019, after working here part-time for over a year. Jason hasn’t always been in the food industry - after running through a string of corporate jobs, he found himself restless and unhappy. He had always enjoyed cooking, so he shifted gears and started working as a personal chef, and he found that being in the kitchen made his creativity come alive.

Jason loves every aspect of the job but especially breaking beef. Five years into this, he still gets excited when the truck shows up with quarters for the rail.

If you ever visit the shop, you may find his favorite assistants helping him set the case – his seven-year old daughter and two-year old son who are officially the cutest occasional members of the Left Bank team.

Roci Rodriguez - Project Manager

Roci came to Left Bank in the spring of 2021 and quickly became an indispensable member of our staff. Roci has a long history of work in pretty much everything you could imagine and she is our go-to for essentially anything we don’t know how to do. It’s hard to define what she does at the shop because it changes daily but it’s always a joy when she walks in the door, brings all the energy we didn’t realize we needed and starts telling jokes.  Roci has taught us how to eat better and how to make up nicknames that only make sense to the one who came up with it.  We love Roci dearly, many of you probably do as well.

Kevin Coble - Butcher

Kevin started working at Left Bank in the fall of 2022 and quickly became a skilled butcher. After having farmed, worked the line in kitchens and even brewed beer for a while, Kevin thought he might see about being a butcher. We are sure happy he did. Having a huge amount of experience in the culinary world combined with growing up processing animals on farm and hunting, he has been a quick study on the process of breaking animals and making all the beautiful items that stock our case.

Kevin is also our resident expert on esoteric sausages and wobbly bits. If you have any questions about “sack sausage” or the perfect country ham, he can clue you in.

Kevin can tell you how to book match a piece of black walnut, grow a perfect tomato, or find the catalytic converter on a golf cart. He’s a renaissance man and we are lucky to have him.

Sam Vega - Butcher

Sam showed up at the shop one day to talk to us about any available positions and left his number. The next day we were in a pinch with no one to staff the hotdog cart and we gave him a call. He showed up, slung hotdogs all night and was a star and has worked here ever since. Growing up in New York City, Sam has apprenticed at a butchery in NYC, worked a season as a fishmonger at Local’s Seafood and most recently guided wilderness trips in the western US.

Sam is our kind of employee, shows up ready to work and learn and is one of the most inquisitive people we have ever known. Over the past year, Sam has put his head down and learned everything from butchery, to charcuterie making to the ins and outs of cooking every cut of meat in the shop.

Constantly coming up with new ideas and keeping us all laughing, we wouldn’t have nearly the fun we do in this shop without him. When he isn’t at the shop, Sam is waiting for hunting season, learning about animals and livestock at different farms and tending to the land at his new home. He will often be the first person you see when you walk in and is the “sample king”. When he asks, “you like spicy?” just say yes and flow with it.

Stefan Molina - Butcher

Stefan joined the team at Left Bank in April of 2023, relocating from Miami. After culinary school at CIA, Stefan worked at a number of fine dining restaurants before realizing that butchery was way more fun, you got to hold a knife really cool and the people were generally more affable. If you ate a sandwich this year - I think about 5000 of you did - you have Stefan to think. He has mastered sausage, gotten really good at breaking down primals and consistently brings new ideas to the table which often make it into the case or the freezer. We’re lucky to have him and so happy he determined that central NC wins over South Florida seven days a week.