Butchers & their pricing ?

Banzai600

first off this is not a butcher bashing thread. We love our butchers, but i just want to see where everyone else is on this subject.....

we buy the majority of our meat from two local butchers as much as we can.

like everything, we have noticed prices increasing at a steady rate over the last 5 months in particular. What was once a combined deal on 4 items for 20e is now 4 items for 25e. Depending on the other items category, they are 4 for 26e, its only a few months ago they were all 4 for 20e.

I picked up two pieces of meat for 5 ppl recently, ham and turkey, was 31.50e !! and they werent enormous size pieces. I said " you'll need to cut that down" and he knocked 5e off the price. Fair enough, It was still dear for the weight as i recall. The ham he had was almost double the supermarket price, was agruablly on par re taste. The turkey was nice though.

i had a frank and polite conversation with both butchers over the last few months, we get on with them. i told them everything in our household has been under review with shopping due to inflated prices across the board here as we all know. We'd always be frugal ourselves, never really throw out food as we're good with planning dinners / lunches etc in advance ( which is key and not rocket science, doing it a long time ), but if the butcher is going way past supermarket prices, we wont be able to support them in the future.

on top of this, butchers are pandering to this silver tray bullsh1t, its fresh but not old skool the way i want it. It seems ppl wont handle meat, they want convenience, in the oven, thats it. How did we do it years ago ? And its more costly too, as the trays etc have to be paid for, and then there's the waste, as you can be sure ppl dont bother their hole recyling them by washing them out, they get binned. Our butcher says its more time for them to pack, and not what they want but they say the majority of ppl do.

Its not there yet, but i reckon you'll only be able to buy a set amount of weight / portions dictated by the butcher in the future , all prepacked etc.

anyone else notice the same?

L1011

Butchers prefer the tray sales cause they're less involved - one of the two decent butchers near me changed to it a few years back, and hence so did I to the other. Aluminium trays will be removed from normal bin waste by magnetic flux separators so will get recycled regardless - too valuable to pay to send to landfill and they don't burn in incinerators

On price rises - my local ones were holding back rises for years compared to supermarkets; they ended up jumping more in one go which certainly makes it look like a huge hike in comparison, but the supermarkets had made many smaller rises. Butcher is still cheaper for me than anything other than short term supermarket deals.

John_Rambo

I hear you! The prices are rising... but I'm seeing it in the supermarkets too along with a seriously limit on choice.

The only butcher silver tray stuff I buy is a certain chicken dark meat mix, but it's awful when it's cooked in the silver tray so we take it out and roast it in a proper tray with a rack so it's not swimming.

Our butcher constants are:

Beef - Striploin, featherblade, onglet (hanger) & skirt. None readily available (except strip) from supermarkets. For a real treat or special occasion we order Dexter beef from Donabate its pricey.. but amazing.

Pork - Big pork chops with the skin on from the butchers (Three big chops for two adults & four kids with crackling) Really good value and incomparable to supermarket pork & impossible to buy in most supermarkets. Pork belly, Boiled ham for lunches for the week.

Lamb - Big smelly Hogget (all type of chops) from a particular butchers we go to and it's super cheap.

The supermarket has it's place for us when it comes to meat and that's Leg of Lamb, pork mince, beef mince & chicken. (I simply can't justify the price of a leg of lamb when it comes to butcher v supermarket).

Caveat... Our lifestyle allows for dithering between three butchers, five fish mongers and the regular supermarket. I'm aware that a lot of people don't have time. I get that, but the supermarkets don't have the cheap cuts, it's either boring overpriced fillet, strip, ribeye or sirloin and the pork chops are basically big splashy rashers.

So... like you, it's to the butchers for us as much as we can but choosing carefully.

Banzai600

we'll try to support them as much as we can, im not too worries about supermarkets, but then they have suppliers too ?

vicious circle really.

SouthWesterly

I split a heifer with friends and get a couple of lambs for the freezer. Not bought from a butcher in years. Works out much cheaper and I've no issue having a t-bone for a midweek dinner

Only meat I buy is chicken, fish and occasionally pork