This month we chat to Mike Alford and Charlotte Pitman, father and daughter at Taunton-based Stillmans Butchers
Mike: We don’t really have titles, we just run the show, well, I’m the Managing Director! My wife, Melanie, oversees all the financial side of it, always has done, she’s pretty good at that. She was a dab hand as a dairy farmer, used to milk cows, and now she runs her own business, letting industrial units and holiday houses, and runs the farm. I’m up here at half past four every morning, we work 13-14 hours a day, it’s that sort of business. Our best blokes are fantastic, and you couldn’t run it without them. Unless you have half a dozen of them who really know what they’re doing, it wouldn’t work. We’ve got some very good slaughtermen – craftsmen they are, they know exactly what they are doing, done it for years. And to be honest those sort of staff are hard to come by. In some ways, it’s funny to say it, but it’s a dying trade.
The business started in 1935 but my grandad bought it in 1954 off Freddie Stillman, that’s where the name comes from as a company. It was a limited company with a good name that everybody knew, so we kept it. Grandad was unbelievable, I learnt everything from him really. I went in the butchers when I was 16 and at the end of the day, I’d clean all the trays wash all the counters out, brush the floors, I did all them jobs for years – I started at the bottom.
Retail sales are all about eating quality meat, it has to be consistently good quality if people are going to come back. So, we’re very fussy about the quality of the meat. We have certain farmers who produce what we want – they know what we want. We wouldn’t let cattle in unless we have been on the farm and seen them. I can tell by looking at them that it’s what we want and that is everything in our business. We have the best pigs, the best cattle and the best lambs – it’s the consistency of the product that seals it. You can have all these schemes like Red Tractor but ultimately the consistency of the product is everything. Red Tractor is for farm assurance, you’ve got to tick all the boxes for the paperwork but it’s nothing to do with paperwork, it’s to do with the welfare of the animals, the way they’re fed and the way they are looked after, is everything. It’s a niche market but we’re busy because of the quality of our meat and we know what we’re doing.
We keep pedigree cattle and sheep as well, show them all over the country. We’ve won all the big shows over the years. But the meat trade is the nitty gritty. The shows are more of a hobby. It’s interesting, brilliant to win the prizes and its good for the business as well - good PR.
Charlotte’s pretty sharp, she came into the office and as soon as she’s in she’s organising it. She catches on, you only have to tell her once and then she makes her own mind up. Her mother’s the same so she’s a chip off the old block. She could take over, she’s capable of doing it and she likes her job - you’ve got to have someone to keep it all going. It’s a hard trade and you’ve got to know it to do it. She’s good.
Charlotte: Dad loves having me here - absolutely loves it. His classic saying is, ‘there’s no one that will look after your business as much as your own’ and I believe that as well, one hundred per cent - my phone is on 24 hours a day even when I go on holiday and now we’ve become more technical I can login from anywhere in the world. When I left school, I came to work here, I worked here for three or four years then I left and went to an estate agents. Then as the business progressed we had some people, some managers, leave and I got the opportunity to come back in. And now I run all the paperwork side of it. I came back and we’ve really progressed from being in the stone age - now we’re in the 21st century. We’ve made lots of changes across the board, we’ve gone from hand-written invoices, around 50-100 a day and now that’s all computerised, it’s all changed since I came back. And I’m trying to push social media and all the things of today’s world. I really like being part of a family business, it’s great. I like it because I’ve always been in the mindset, I’ll always go above and beyond. I’ll do anything, at Christmas when it’s really busy in the shop I’ll go in and serve customers. I’ve got my lorry licence as well so I can drive an artic, I’ll go out picking up cattle, I’ll go out delivering meat, I’ll do anything. Don’t mind getting my hands dirty.
We offer a service from pasture to plate. We will go to farms, collect their animals for them, bring them here, process them and have them delivered straight back to the producer for either private use or sale. We’ve really started to push that this year, always done it, but never advertised it, and it’s becoming very popular. Pasture to plate aspect – has become really popular. We have five livestock lorries on the road and we go all over the south west.
We like the fact there are very low food miles, we’ve got land around the premises where we have our own sheep and cattle, from the point of here to the end consumer there are zero food miles. It’s basically from here to the shops and that’s what we pride ourselves on, all locally reared and of course 100% British.
Between you and me…
Charlotte on Mike: He is the most laid back chilled out person you could ever wish to meet but all the staff don’t believe me because when he is in here, he is 100mph all the time. Work, work, work! At home he’s such a completely different person and the work folk don’t believe me!
Mike on Charlotte: She likes to finish one job at a time. If you start giving her too many jobs to do, you’ll get on the wrong side of her. She’s got a very good way with people; she can talk to anybody and she has a nice way with her.
COMPANY STATS
ESTABLISHED:
1935
LOCATION:
Stillmans Butchers
55 Station Road
Taunton
TA1 1NZ
GET IN TOUCH:
01823 272661
stillmansbutchers.co.uk
Facebook @Stillmansbutchers
Instagram @Stillmansbutchers
