Pork Butt sematics ?

[Flat Rocker]

The local Harris Teeter grocery store would have sales on bone-in Boston butts for around $0.99/ lb maybe twice a year. I haven't seen them advertised at all since the first of the year, but this week they have "Smithfield All Natural Boston Butt Pork Roast" for $1.29/lb. It's bone-in, and I think it looks the same as what I used to buy, which was just called a bone-in pork butt. Has the naming convention for pork butts changed to Boston butt pork roast? Is the "roast" the same thing as the bone-in butts I was used to getting? I'm confused and wondering why there haven't been any "traditional" butts available for a long time.
Sorry for my ignorance, but I know someone here will have a good explanation. Thanks.

[RonB]

I wish I could help, but stuff does change - even if in name only. I'd suggest asking the butcher at the store, but there probably isn't a real butcher any more.

Do the roasts look like a butt?

[Flat Rocker]

We were at a different grocery store yesterday and I stopped by the meat counter and I asked the guy what the difference was. I don't think I'd call him a butcher by any stretch of the imagination, but he "thought" the pork butt roast was just a regular butt they cut in half.
Part of me thinks that might be the case and part of me thinks he just made it up because he didn't know either. I'll keep waiting for a real pork butt to show up somewhere.

[FireMan]

Nuthin like when in doubt, make it up, yessir!

[Uncle Bob]

It may be that their marketing department believes a lot of newbs got interested in bbq during Covid stuff and were confused by the "butt" part so felt the need to add the word roast for context.

You should have been around 50ish years ago when government imposed price ceilings on beef prices during the huge inflation surges. All sorts of legacy cuts got new names to circumvent the price controls.

[RonB]

Kinda like McDs sells a sausage and biscuit sandwich instead of a sausage biscuit otherwise everyone would think they were selling a biscuit made from sausage...

[Donw]

If they look the same, the difference is the added cost of printing the work roast on the label. In your case the word roast costs an additional 30 cents per pound for the printing.

[Huskee]

Agree with the above, the name is so close that w/o looking I can tell you it's the same.

[Flat Rocker]

So I went back to Harris Teeter this morning and they had a butcher who said he doesn't know why they added the word roast to the product, so Donw is right, that word now costs 30 cents more a pound. I told the butcher I used to get them for $0.99/lb - his response was "used to" ! So here is the proof, even though the word roast is kinda washed out by the flash. I have 3 of them in the freezer for future cooks. Thanks for everyone's responses.

[Mr. Bones]

I most often buy pork butts when HyVee has em fer ¢99...they're Hormel Aways Tender...

When I git butts from Dillons (Kroger), they're these same Smithfields, they're pork butts, an they work jus fine, never a complaint from here...

Cain't rightly recollect what Checkers carries, but they come cryoed two to a bag, an run heavier, median average

yers is large, at 10.45 lbs., compared th th median average I see here...

I typically come home with 8 or 9 lb.ers.

[Murdy]

A while back, the Pork Producers trade organization launched a campaign to rename various cuts to things they deemed more marketable. The only one I recall is changing bone-in pork chops to pork t-bones. That looks like a butt; I'm certain it was a marketing decision.

[crazytown3]

I see these "pork shoulder roasts" at my local store once in a while, with no mention of "butt" in the labeling. They seem to be good old pork butts, sometimes trimmed down a little.

[Potkettleblack]

Semantics? I'm always up for some antics

https://getyarn.io/yarn-clip/60e245de-2c86-4550-8b53-b2bcda7f2c0c#nCBXnHYi.copy

[FireMan]

Hey, words are expensive! Yessir!

[WayneT]

Yep, just like all those decals on a teenager’s car make it faster.

[Mr. Bones]

Th Thrush ones, an Cherry Bomb ones seemed especially effective, in that regard...

[Jared49]

"Boston butt" goes back a long way, it’s a reference to how they were cut & stored. It’s more that it’s an "old school term" vs a new name for it.