Butchers buck the trend as doors stay open

HIGH-STREET butchers have bucked the recession to emerge as the most resilient sector of Ireland’s service industry.

Industry chiefs have reported that not one single trader has gone out of business in the past 12 months, as customers return to the traditional butcher to buy their meat.

Unlike almost every other sector of our beleaguered service industry, butchers are even making a comeback and have opened up a dozen new premises in the past year.

Dave Lang, project and development manager of the Associated Craft Butchers of Ireland (ACBI), said its 500 members have thrived by adapting and learning new skills, selling quality produce and maintaining their unique relationship with their loyal customer base.

“It’s not been easy, but I’m happy to say that butchers shops are not closing. It’s the opposite.

“There are 500 craft butchers and a further 300 local butcher shops in the country and not one of them has closed in the past 12 months, to the best of my knowledge. In fact at least a dozen new ones have opened up,” said Mr Lang.

However, far from being complacent, ACBI is taking innovative steps to ensure its members’ future prosperity, including recruiting a celebrity to offer butchers cooking lessons to help them survive the recession.

Leading chef, Neven Maguire, will spearhead a new initiative to re-educate the nation’s butchers on how to prepare cheap, old-fashioned recipes which they can pass on to their customers.

The move, says the ACBI, is a response to growing customer demands for cheaper cuts of meat, such as oxtail, shin beef and shoulders of lamb.

The group’s chief executive, John Hickey, said traditional recipes have now come back in vogue as cash-strapped customers ditch pricey prime fillets for less expensive cuts.

He says it’s vital that all 500 retailers of the association are armed with the knowledge of how to prepare recession-busting meals, so they can pass on tips to their customers, many of who forgot how to prepare old-fashioned grub during the boom.

“It’s a response to the times we live in. Like all businesses, butchers need constant upskilling. More and more customers are asking how to prepare proper meals and butchers need to be able to tell them how to do it.”

The initiative, which will come into place this summer, will see rigorous cooking workshops taking place across the country, to which butchers and their staff will be invited. A similar programme will be run at the ACBI’s new premises at Teagasc in Ashtown, Co Dublin.

Chef Neven Maguire is also writing a book of traditional recipes, which will be available exclusively in butcher’s shops before Christmas, in response to growing customer demands for value for money.

Mr Maguire said: “Customers have trusted their butcher from generation to generation and rightly so because the meat can be traced and it is hung and prepared properly. People are very particular about where they buy meat, but they now want to know how to prepare the lesser-used cuts.

“And the attraction is obvious, because cuts such as a neck of lamb, belly of pork, lamb’s shanks and lamb’s tongue are just as tasty, but cost a fraction of the price. For example a leg of lamb might cost €35, but a shoulder of lamb retails at between €20 to €22, but it’s just as good when slowly roasted with garlic.”

The constant drive to upskill butchers is seen by the ACBI as the main reason they have bucked the recession.

“We’ve had to move with the times and try and turn things round because butchers tend not to talk themselves up enough.

“We set up Ireland’s first centralised school of butchery five years ago, with three-year FETAC apprenticeships, mostly taught on the shop floor. We moved just last week to a new premises where there is an abattoir on site, which will enable us to teach members how to slaughter properly. Again this is very significant, because skills like this are in danger of dying out,” he added.

Craft butcher Declan Corry is so confident of the future of the industry, he upsized and moved to a 6,000sq ft premises, ten times the size of his former shop in Loughrea, Co Galway, just over two years ago.

“Butchers traditionally do well in recessions. The bottom line is that people will always need to eat, however bad things are in the economy,” he said.