Gunter Bros. Meat Co. Ltd.

Dennis and Harry Gunter currently own and operate Gunter Bros. Co. Ltd. in beautiful Courtenay, BC on Vancouver Island.

Founded in the 1930’s by their grandfather, who was trained as a butcher by his grandfather in England, Gunter Brothers began as a small on-farm slaughter operation for his own animals, offering door-to-door sales in Cumberland and Courtenay. The operation expanded in the 1950’s to turkey farming. With 10,000 turkeys, this expansion also required a cold storage unit facility. In the 1960’s a slaughter facility for beef, pork and lamb was built on the family homestead. This also facilitated the ability to start fulfilling custom cutting work. In 1979, Dennis & Harry’s father built his own processing plant on his property next door to increase the number of animals that could be processed.

In 1987, Dennis and Harry took over the operation from their father; the facility has been expanded 3 times since then to a full processing facility. They currently process approximately 1000 beef, 2000 swine and 800-900 lambs every year, in addition to bison and fallow deer. They have a full scale cut and wrap and further processing facility for curing and smoking meats. The majority of their products are sold out of the retail shop located on the property. Bacon, sausage and pepperoni are some of their popular signature products.

In recent years, the Gunter Brothers have developed some key collaborative relationships with producers across the province for custom processing, particularly in the grass-fed beef industry and have been able to gain access to some local retailers such as Country Grocer, and food service distributors such as B&C Foods. These retailers are committed to offering consumers local products and Gunter Brothers are in turn, supporting the local Island economy.