SPRINGFIELD -- At many stores these days, customers can have a hard time getting a meat cutter to trim a steak or roast just they way they want it.

But not at 90 Meat Outlet, which has its own custom cutting counter.

"We'll trim it just the way the customer likes it, right in front of the customer," said owner Jim Vallides. "None of this taking something in the back and then coming back out with it. You watch us do it."

And customers looking at many stores for something a little out of the ordinary for that ethnic dish -- think beef tongue, oxtail or hog maw made from a pig's stomach -- at a chain store are more likely to come away frustrated, not satisfied.

"We have all that type of things," said Vallides. "We do a tremendous business with ethnic food. We sell lamb. We sell a lot of goat."

Vallides and his 90 Meat Outlet staff will celebrate a grand-re-opening at the store May 12, 13 and 14 following a large-scale renovation project that saw the store expand from 3,000-square feet of display space to more than 7,000-square feet. The new space opened around Thanksgiving time.

Vallides founded 90 Meat Outlet out of a few small coolers in the front of the building in 1998. At the time, he had a company across the street that made breaded chicken like cutlets and nuggets.

Today, 90 Meat now has 50 employees. And it is the center of a three family-run and family-owned businesses.

His daughter, Alexis, is the manager at Armata's Market in Longmeadow.

"It is a very different operation," Vallides said. "But we do custom cut at the butcher counter there, too."

His son Michael manages Latino Food Distributors which brings in and distributes foods and brands popular in Puerto Rico like Titan-brand frozen foods. Latino Foods Distributors manufactures its own Puerto Rican sofrito, a type of seasoning flavored with cilantro, which is popular in Latino cooking.

Since the new space became available in November, Vallides said he's spent the past few months rearranging things, making sure the products are displayed in a logical order and that foot traffic flows nicely through the store.

"People like it better. They were in here elbow-to-elbow," he said. "They don't feel like they are being pushed along by the flow of foot traffic."

The new layout also gives more space for that custom cutting counter and might allow more space for new products.

It also allowed Vallides to move and expand the cutting room in back where his employees prepare meat for sale.

"They are back here all day, every day we're open," he said.

At one station, workers fed cuts of beef through a tenderizing machine to make cube steaks. At another station, employees cut pigs feet to the proper size with a saw.

One worker carefully rolled steaks in a seasoning rub. The store transitions every spring from meat cuts used in soups and stews -- like oxtail -- to cuts for grilling.

"We sell a lot of chicken," Vallides said.

Meat cutters Jose Gonzales and Diego Marte cut beef short ribs into thin-sliced flanken, a favorite of ethnic cuisines in the of Asia and Latin America.

"The Brazilians love them," Vallides said. "A lot of ethnic groups love them in stews and soups.They are big in Korean cooking, too. But you can't get them."

One customer comes to Springfield from Worcester to buy flanken, Vallides said.

The prices at 90 Meat outlet draw in a lot of out-of-towners. People from the Albany, New York, area come to buy meat by the freezer full.

"My big thing has always been 'buy direct and save.'" Vallides said. "I work directly with the packing houses in the Midwest, the chicken distributors. The potatoes come from Hadley."

In April, he got a call from an egg distributor who was oversupplied and looking to move inventory. Was 90 Meat outlet interested?

"I normally don't carry eggs," Vallides said. "But it was something I was able to bring it at a reasonable price and offer to people as an opportunity buy. You aren't going to see them that cheap anywhere else."

On this day, he had them stacked in the store priced at 99 cents a dozen. One woman stopped and picked up six dozen eggs.

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