TO MAKE A GREAT CONSTELLATION YOU NEED SEVERAL BRIGHT STARS
To make a great constellation you need several bright stars. That’s the best way I can describe a good business and how Brace of Butchers was able to win the title of the UK’s Best Butcher as voted for in the Farm Shop & Deli Awards.
We set up Brace of Butchers in 2014 from nothing if you look at it as a premises or organisation, but in reality the team you make provides the seed from which to grow everything and enables the creation of something exciting, and worthy of winning some great awards.
Treat others how you were treated. . .
Throughout my life, I have been fortunate enough to meet leaders or influencers that have inspired my ideas, but only a few that allowed these ideas to manifest into actions. The first was Norman who allowed me, at the age of 13, to learn how to grow plants - it sounds basic but it was not just a couple we were doing hundreds, shortly followed by two ladies at a very traditional market nursery/garden centre. They taught me about retail and how to sell without being obvious. Having left school at 15 with limited qualifications, they encouraged me to go to night school, day release college and ultimately pushed me to attend Writtle College aged 18. During my sandwich year, while studying an HND in Commercial Horticulture, Dan Neuterboom taught me the art of bigger business and the idea of running a commercial farm – lots of staff and big dreams - a skill that subsequently allowed me to join The Watercress Company at 22 in a junior technical role. That’s where I met my long-term and current mentor - Peter Old. This relationship has developed into a 22-year partnership based on incredible trust and mutual support that has endured to create some amazing opportunities resulting in big and small adventures. After seven years I was appointed MD and after a further seven, Peter agreed we could build the Brace of Butchers. It was an idea, a new venture that would teach me what it was to stay up at night with excitement and unrest. The idea of opening a butchers during a recession, while butchers were shutting, was the objective – and the solution was how could we reinvent a dying industry.
It’s this trust that has enabled me to progress to the next stage, by creating a team that is dedicated and passionate, determined to achieve the very best they can. The butchery business has pivoted and adapted to the turmoil around us in the market and has a fantastic team in which two enduring characters have been involved from the very start – meet Rob & Ben. I met them many years ago, armed with a whole Iberia Jammon leg (as you do!) and took it down to them where they worked at the time to bone it so I could share it with my fellow team at The Watercress Company. They looked with some confusion but the answer was ‘Yes! Come back later.’ Unfortunately, in the following year the business where they worked folded and after a year of some planning and thinking I approached Rob while he was behind the meat counter at Tesco – he was uninspired, under-utilised and unmotivated by a non butchery business. The offer was made and he looked excited. It was his helping hand in a lifetime’s dream to create a butchery. The text message that followed the first conversation that night was ‘It’s a yes, but I need a co-worker.’ I agreed, and named it the Brace of Butchers immediately. Since then it’s been a constant journey, adapting our thinking, stretching our energy, bringing in new team members and sadly saying goodbye to some too, but this has led to a constellation that looks like something, the lights are brighter than ever and like all good stories, the chapters just keep getting better….