Restaurant sales and meat boxes - Pork

[MillLeat]

Hi all,

I'm just after general advice on sales models for heritage pork, whether farmers out there split their sales between direct sales customers and restaurants or any of those value adding with curing/smoking.

We are just dipping our toes in the water with our Tamworths in what is obviously very challenging times for the catering industry as a whole. That said we do have a fair selection of gastro pubs and fine dining restaurants locally for which we will be ready to deliver in March/April next year, hopefully with Covid slowly moving out the way.

Our intentions are to split cuts between restaurant sales and direct to customers over our website and facebook. We will look to sell the best cuts to the restaurants such as, sirloin steaks, french pork loined roast, coppa steaks, tenderloins etc

For our DS customers there will be much more emphasis on sausage with other pork cuts. Hopefully we will be able to offer a better value box with less desired cuts to attempt to sell all we can.

I am interested in curing and smoking, keeping the pigs on the farm for longer although I have no idea what the going rate for a whole pig to sell to a smoke/curing house or whether it is worth using them as an intermediary before delivering the finished product to delicatessens/specialty butchers.

Another question would be where I can find resources to work out the going rate for prices for the various customers, even joint prices for restaurants for example.

Many thanks

Oliver

 

[TripleSix]

Have you somewhere local that will kill them for reasonable money?

One issue with selling meat is you're left with a lot of bits people don't want, ie prime cuts go first.

Getting a whole pig made into sausages can be quite profitable.

Are the local restaurants interested in rare breed stuff, as it can be a lot more fatty than commercial meat...

 

[SilliamWhale]

I wonder what you find it costs?

I've just had my house ones slaughtered. Fed them on rolled barley, grass and a few pignuts. Cost me £160 per pig to get them slaughtered, butchered and sausaged and baconed. I can buy half a pig for £160.

Its fun though for 6 months of the year. Piglet cost me £35

 

[DanielBennett]

Worth exploring. You may need to consider continuity of supply, ie. restaurants will probably want a weekly delivery.

Nothing beats research; speak to as many restaurants as you can. Come up with 5 or 6 questions you ask them around pricing, supply, cuts, etc. Negative answers are as valuable as positive answers.

 

[thesilentone]

We need to get much smarter and pro-active in the selling of meat. The way we sell, the way we serve and the way market our products needs a massive update.

It is interesting to see local butchers selling ' packs ' (family packs, weekend packs, barbecue packs, etc) via social media, and doing very well. I counted one Butcher who sold over 100 of these packs from one advert.

Also selling packs, or items (eg 6 sirloin steaks) to the highest bidder by a set time appears to work also.

If we are to grow, we need to serve the catering and fast food trade more directly, and open traditional take away's using locally produced meat/pies/etc ready to eat.

Drive through meat sellers, with large window adverts (like KFC) and menu's offering choice of individual items or packs where you drive in, place an order, and pay and collect on exit.

A job for the entrepreneurs, get on it, as this ball is rolling: https://meatlessfarm.com/

 

[Davey]

With direct sales its always easier to go with 1/4 boxes otherwise you end up buggering about delivering a couple of steaks.

Generally quite seasonal although sausages and bacon sell well all year.

Be careful with pubs and restaurants, they want all the best bits and can be a right pain in the arse. I had one pub phone me up 4pm on a Friday to say they needed x, y & z before they opened at 6, genuinely shocked I wasn't going to drop everything for £50. Equally I ended up having to go into a local pub on a busy Saturday night and refuse to leave until I was paid.

If you can selling direct to a local butcher is the way to go, especially if they use the same slaughter house as you so you don't have to pay delivery.

Ideally you want to sell as much meat as possible before you get it back from the butcher because once you freeze you need to amend the use by dates and EH don't like that. I used to print a load of stickers where I could write the frozen on date followed by a 'use within x months' under it.

Be prepared to deal with townies who have never cooked a joint before or even defrosted anything. They by everything from tesco express that day but like the idea of shopping local.

When I did it everything went through facebook, no need for a website or anything.

 

[Bongodog]

Another thing to be wary of, restaurants will change menus in line with latest food crazes, steaks are always on the menu, but other things come and go, presently lots of places have belly pork on the menu, a few years back it was lamb shank. A few weeks back I was in a hotel with ox cheek suet pudding on the menu, thats a more difficult one for a small producer to supply than if it had just said steak and kidney pudding as you've got far less meat that you can supply them.

 

[MillLeat]

Thanks for all your comments so far, very invaluable.

Our local abattoir butcher will kill at £26, butcher at £24 (was open to the idea of frenching certain joints) and £13/14 for vacuum packaging and sausaging at £1.80/kg.

I definitely agree here that the sales model needs to change and the use of facebook seems to be essential when dealing with direct sales to customer. The hard part is finding the balance value adding the product or hunting around for a top price without it eating up all your time and energy making drop offs and as Davey rightly said, getting unnecessary calls from pubs for 50 quids worth.

A good idea someone gave me would be to offer on site butchering courses with a skilled butcher to customers, then get the knack of it, offer it yourself and have the attendees pay for cuts to take away. Of course though this requires significant investment in cold room, sanitised premises and the obvious red tape.

Genuinely interested to know if anyone has gone down the curing/smoking route and made a fair profit.

 

[thesilentone]

Recently my wife visited a daughter and was away for a few days.

She kindly left several items inside the top of the freezer for me to cook and eat when away. Easy cook things like steak, sausage, lamb chops, chicken, etc.

One evening I had the lamb chops with some mixed veg, they came from a supermarket, and looked small to me.

I lightly seal fried 4, then stuck them in the oven for 15 mins.

They were excellent, the fat texture was good, and the flavour was great.

What a perfect snack/take away for any fast food shop, a sachet of mint sauce, with mixed salad or jacket spud - perfect. Cumberland hot dogs, Melton Mowbray Pies with Peas and gravy. Traditional Cornish pasties etc, etc.

All sold from British branded take-away's.

The choices are huge, chicken as you like it, meat dippers, it go's on and on. sauces, cheese's, crisps, drinks all exclusively British.

Someone get on with it..... !!

 

[Davey]

Local butcher did our bacon and for a time there was another firm locally doing chorizo which sold really well.

I looked at doing the butchery etc on site but the difference of having a clean room for storage and selling of meat to a food prep area was going to cost thousands so didn't stack up when I had a local butcher willing to do it all. Plus it takes time, best part of a day per pig in the beginning and I didn't enjoy it enough to want to get better.

 

[betweenthelines]

WTF is heritage pork?

 

[Johnnyboxer]

WTF is heritage pork?

Hazard a guess
Rare breeds
Old fashioned cuts or curing/processing

Hence heritage, ‘it’s what gets the public’s juice ms flowing

They don’t want common pork, when they can eat heritage pork

 

[Highland Mule]

WTF is heritage pork?

20% more money. It's called marketting and selling your produce, and something we should all be doing.

My advice: do not deliver to public - get them to collect and make sure there are animals for them to meet. They want to know you're not a factory and care for what you do. You're selling a chop/ sausage/ roast but also a story and the customer will happily pay for both. Start slow, and make sure that they are looking forward to the next sale.

 

[Danllan]

We need to get much smarter and pro-active in the selling of meat. The way we sell, the way we serve and the way market our products needs a massive update.

It is interesting to see local butchers selling ' packs ' (family packs, weekend packs, barbecue packs, etc) via social media, and doing very well. I counted one Butcher who sold over 100 of these packs from one advert.

Also selling packs, or items (eg 6 sirloin steaks) to the highest bidder by a set time appears to work also.

If we are to grow, we need to serve the catering and fast food trade more directly, and open traditional take away's using locally produced meat/pies/etc ready to eat.

Drive through meat sellers, with large window adverts (like KFC) and menu's offering choice of individual items or packs where you drive in, place an order, and pay and collect on exit.

A job for the entrepreneurs, get on it, as this ball is rolling: https://meatlessfarm.com/

Yep, all true.

@MillLeat we only sell beef in this way, and find it best to sell a whole beast or more and then deliver once it's all allotted... We don't b^gger abut with individual cuts, but offer boxes at £50 increments, the bigger the box the more latitude we offer. Some who started with a single box a few years ago now order a whole side once a year, cut and packed as they want it and delivered straight to their freezer. It works well for us.

 

[Highland Mule]

Yep, all true.

@MillLeat we only sell beef in this way, and find it best to sell a whole beast or more and then deliver once it's all allotted... We don't b^gger abut with individual cuts, but offer boxes at £50 increments, the bigger the box the more latitude we offer. Some who started with a single box a few years ago now order a whole side once a year, cut and packed as they want it and delivered straight to their freezer. It works well for us.

What do you charge/ what do they get in a box? I'd expect to gross ~£3k for a 380-400kg R5.

 

[bobk]

What do you charge/ what do they get in a box? I'd expect to gross ~£3k for a 380-400kg R5.

How many a week do you sell , bullocks not boxes

 

[Highland Mule]

How many a week do you sell , bullocks not boxes

Think single digit per year. It's not a serious business venture but a nice bonus in the autumn.

 

[Danllan]

What do you charge/ what do they get in a box? I'd expect to gross ~£3k for a 380-400kg R5.

That's secret! However, between ourselves, a gross average for a carcass will be well over your guess on a £kg basis.

 

[bobk]

That's secret! However, between ourselves, a gross average for a carcass will be well over your guess on a £kg basis.

What's the plan for the less favoured cuts ? freezer

 

[ImLost]

What's the plan for the less favoured cuts ? freezer

Burgers and mince, they sell all day