Someone has misplaced a 35-pound turkey, and Ron Savenor is getting a little nervous.

The owner of Savenor's Market in Boston, a renowned gourmet shop, Savenor estimates he will ship or sell about 1,200 turkeys this holiday season.

He is at the helm of his simple shop as it bustles with activity two days before Thanksgiving, with customers popping in to pick up their holiday bird and employees unloading a truck and weighing turkeys in the back of the store.

Maxine Stanley, a long-time customer, waits for her bird at the counter and remembers why she began shopping at Savenor's.

"[Savenor's] father used to sell to Julia Child. She used to buy all her meat at Savenor's in Cambridge," Stanley says, referring to the store's 52-year stint at 92 Kirkland St. in Cambridge.

The store has been a family-run operation since its beginnings. When it opened in Cambridge in 1940, it was operated by Ron Savenor's grandfather, Abraham. Abraham started the store after fleeing Lithuania, where he and his wife "had a small food store," according to Ron Savenor.

"Like everyone else, they were running from Hitler," Savenor says of his grandparents' immigration.

According to the Boston Herald, Abraham's son Jack took over the shop when Abraham died a year after the shop's opening, dropping out of a college pre-med program to become a butcher.