Words by Sam
3 mins
It’s a strange thing to say but it’s surprising how many of the aspects of a meat business boil down to the fundamentals of butchery. In its purest form, a good butcher’s shop buys in sides of pork, whole lambs, whole chickens and quarters of beef – then sells them in smaller portions to the customer’s requirement. However, a multitude of factors go into turning the customer’s head, and it’s the job of the man in the stripy apron to make the underappreciated cuts sing, as well as the ones that sell themselves. As the old adage goes; anybody can cut steaks, it takes a butcher to do the real work.
Once you start thinking about this, you’ll see it everywhere. It’s no surprise that Britain loves a banger, Americans watch football games eating chicken wings and burgers, New Zealand are mad about pies and Italian cuisine celebrates every aspect of the fifth quarter, or ‘cinque quattro’ as they so deliciously call it. For every kilo of fillet sold, there’s 180kg of beef waiting to be boned out and made the most of – the world’s demand for steak sets a punishing pace that we’re all constantly fighting to keep up with.
Of course economics comes into play here, if somebody won’t pay eight pounds, maybe they’ll pay seven, if they won’t pay seven maybe they’ll pay six. Levers are pulled and dials twisted up and down the country to keep things ticking over, creating a range of price points and a breadth of product to suit all pallets and interests.
At Field & Flower, we take enormous pride in our livestock and farmers. By connecting them straight to the customer, you, we can grow together and have the freedom to develop, grow and innovate with them – I’m sure you’re seeing this coming through in the new launches that we produce each month. You’ll notice that this all ties into what I was saying about my old butcher’s shop – chicken breasts and ribeye steaks sell themselves, but we’re making the rest of the carcass as exciting as possible, because this is of direct benefit to the farmer – I can explain why with the humble chicken – be aware this is a simplified model.
If a free-range chicken is slaughtered and you need to make £10 to cover your costs and make your margin, the best thing to do would be to sell the whole thing with giblets for £10 – happy days. However, if customers out there only want the breast and you can’t sell the rest for love nor money, you choose to freeze it or downgrade it into (god forbid) something like a pet food contract, or you have to sell each breast for £5 to make your dough – this means you have an overpriced breast and brutally under-priced legs, carcass and wings.
Luckily the world isn’t that cruel, and there’s a pretty good market for chicken thighs thanks to the efforts of Jamie et al in the noughties – let’s say the breasts can now sell for £3 each and thighs for £2 each – things don’t look so steep and there’s less to deal with at the end of the day.
At Field & Flower, we want to go one step further and sell as many drumsticks, wings and carcasses as we do breasts and thighs. We’re over here marinating, confit-ing, shredding, pie making, smoking, broth-ing, stocking, gravy-ing – my world is built around this because, to me, making the most of every part of these amazing animals is as good-a life’s purpose as I can think of. The drumsticks have still come from beautiful free-range birds, but because of the economics of the carcass, we can sell these at a very reasonable price, to supply slow-grown hubbard chicken to households of a range of incomes and bring the economics of the carcass into full balance – our target is to buy in complete natural proportions, and I don’t think it’s so crazy. We need to all work to build demand for these products because in the case of meat, food waste actually is a matter of life and death. At Field & Flower we are doing everything in our power to make sure that no animal is slaughtered for nothing, humane or not.
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