With international health restrictions enforced to contain the COVID-19 pandemic, picking up food from the supermarket has become an arduous task. Aside from the hassle of following the promoted guidelines, going out to such a public establishment also includes an infection risk.
Providing a safer and more ideal alternative to being in a possibly crowded place and waiting in line, Stilton Butchers from Stilton, United Kingdom, is now extending its services past the local area.
Launched in 1978 by Peter Morgan in a quaint village called Stilton near Peterborough, the butcher shop has been reliably providing premium quality meat for nearly half a century. Grabbing the name from the high street, he called his venture “Stilton Butchers.” After a successful opening, Peter opened another shop within a year, and two others closely followed.
Realizing the need for high-quality meat in the catering industry, Peter Morgan decided to branch out from their brick-and-mortar locations, selling the shops and moving into a large, custom-built unit. The business then solely focused on the catering market. Stilton Butchers is now owned by James Morgan, Peter’s son who played professional ice hockey in Canada and the UK.
“I built the business alongside my father, Peter Morgan, who sadly passed away last year,” James recalls. “We realized there was an ever-growing demand for high-quality meat to be delivered directly to your door, alongside the growth of home deliveries from the big supermarket brands.”
Although Stilton Butchers was building its online presence, its custom-built unit still had top priority in the business plan. With its numerous units and talented team of traditional local butchers, it became one of the primary suppliers of high-quality, grade-A meat to cafes, pubs, and leading Michelin-star restaurants all over the United Kingdom.
This all changed with the pandemic hit. As a nationwide lockdown was pushed in place, the family-run Stilton Butchers, based in Peterborough with over 60 employees, was left with no customers and 1 million pounds’ worth of fresh meat.
Fortunately, national athlete and owner James Morgan sought opportunity in the crisis. Making the shift online by installing an efficient, nationwide delivery service and a redeveloped website, Stilton Butchers transformed from a £7 million turnover catering business into a whopping £15 million retail butcher almost overnight.
“Almost instantly, we saw sales skyrocket and, in six months, watched our retail turnover more than double the previous catering income,” James proudly reveals. “We’ve taken the website from obtaining an average of 500 orders a month to an average of over 5,000 monthly orders.”
Achieving a fantastic feat, and at the height of the unprecedented health crisis, Stilton Butchers is revolutionizing the industry and is well on its way to becoming the most prominent online butchers in Europe.
The shop’s lauded delivery system boasts efficiency and five-star restaurant-quality meat in high-performance, thermal-insulated packages. These employed packages for courier delivery are specifically designed to maintain freshness, keeping the order under 5°C for up to three days.
Driven to succeed and introduce fine-dining to every home in the United Kingdom, Stilton Butchers is in a league of its own, never compromising quality for efficiency and slowly gaining a trustworthy reputation as the preferred supermarket alternative.
“We really believe in the business, everything we stand for, and we offer a service that the supermarkets can’t match,” James Morgan shares. “Luckily, the infrastructure was already there when the pandemic hit, and we were then able to build on that to grow the business into what it is today.”
Browse through the leading supermarket alternative’s selection on its official website.
