Gaff’s Meat and Specialty Foods

Gaff’s Meat and Specialty Foods traces its roots back to 1947, when the family’s grandfather Andrew Gaffka opened a meat shop in Detroit, Michigan. Decades later the business relocated to Central Florida, and it now operates as a family run butcher and specialty grocer with locations in Port Orange and at 2075 S Woodland Blvd in DeLand. The DeLand store sits on the southern stretch of Woodland Boulevard, further from the historic downtown core than most of the city’s restaurants and cafes, in the corridor that serves neighborhoods on DeLand’s south side.

The shop functions less like a conventional grocery store and more like the neighborhood butcher counters that have mostly disappeared from American commercial strips, with fresh cut meats, seafood, prepared deli items, and specialty grocery products all handled under one roof by people who know the product. That kind of shop rewards a bit of conversation with the staff behind the counter, whether the question is how to cook a less common cut or which sausage will work best on a particular night’s menu. Because the business has been continuously family operated since its Detroit beginnings, there is a depth of practical meat cutting knowledge behind the counter that a typical supermarket meat department cannot match.

Running two locations, one in Port Orange and one in DeLand, puts Gaff’s in an unusual middle category: bigger than a single storefront butcher shop but nowhere near the scale of a regional or national grocery chain, and still owned and operated by the same family that has been in the meat business since the 1940s. For DeLand residents who want to cook a proper dinner rather than rely on a restaurant, or who are hosting a gathering and need a specific cut in a specific quantity, Gaff’s offers the kind of personal service that larger stores in the area generally do not provide.

The South Woodland Boulevard location makes Gaff’s a useful stop for anyone living on DeLand’s south side or passing through on the way to or from the Interstate 4 corridor, without requiring a trip into the more congested downtown blocks. For a city whose food and drink identity leans heavily on its historic downtown restaurant row, Gaff’s represents a different but equally local piece of the picture, the kind of specialty food retailer that keeps a genuine butcher trade alive in a town that might otherwise depend entirely on supermarket meat counters.