The demand for home grown Welsh Black beef is growing with more and more customers asking for it by name, according to a top butcher.
Master butcher Tony Gibson, who runs the acclaimed butchery at Bodnant Welsh Food, in the Conwy Valley, is reporting an increase in demand for the product.
Yorkshireman Tony, who joined the award-winning food business this year, said: “A lot of people locally do ask specifically for Welsh Black beef and it is growing in popularity again.
“It is an old-fashioned, traditional breed which was becoming scarce but these breeds are becoming fashionable again and that’s certainly the case with the Welsh Black and I can see why it is.
“It’s perfectly adapted to its habitat and has been bred for it. It’s suited for hilly grassland and they’re strong and sturdy, very good mothers and because they’ve got thicker coats they can survive through colder nights.
“They’re suited to the climate and they feed very well on grass and put weight on when Continental breeds would struggle.
“They’re good to eat, slow maturing to produce nicely marbled meat with plenty of flavour.”
And Tony, 53, from Scarborough, in Yorkshire, knows what he’s talking about because his steaks and joints have fed some of the world’s top cricketers before he took over behind the meat counter of the flagship Welsh food centre.
For many years he ran Gibsons Butchers which was voted Yorkshire’s most dynamic and exciting family-run business at Barclays Local Business Awards in 2009 and North of England Family Business of the Year in 2010.
The Barclays win earned him a ringing endorsement from Reggae Reggae Sauce entrepreneur Levi Roots who described Gibsons as a fantastic business and an outstanding example of a family firm.
Keen cricketer Tony – who has been involved with Scarborough Cricket Club and the world-famous Scarborough Cricket Festival for 40 years – used to supply meat for meals when top international touring sides played their traditional matches at the seaside ground.
After selling the business two years ago he has worked for supermarket giants Tesco as a consultant and butchery expert, advising the UK’s biggest grocers on the remodelling of their meat departments and on customer relations.
But Tony wanted to return to his roots and jumped at the chance to take on a new challenge at Bodnant. He said: “I’m from a farming family in North Yorkshire, just outside Scarborough and was channelled into butchery by my grandfather at a very early age.
“I’ve never known anything else. I was in the slaughterhouse at the age of seven and by 11 I was working in the village butchers.
“The traditional environment has been my life. I understand livestock because we kept livestock at home and we had the butchers shop in Scarborough but we didn’t see many Welsh Blacks in Yorkshire.
“But this is a gorgeous area and I knew the quality of the produce, particularly the beef and the lamb which has a worldwide reputation and when I came here I just fell in love with the place.
“I like the ethos here at Bodnant Welsh Food. It’s about the carbon footprint of the business and sourcing locally and I want to be involved in that at a local and Welsh level.
“It’s also about supporting the local economy and agriculture and that’s important to me because I recognise how difficult life has been for traditional hill farmers.
“I have found that there is a particular interest in Welsh Black beef here because they really do like to support produce that is Welsh and have a passion for it and at Bodnant we share that passion.”
Gwyndaf Pritchard, General Manager at Bodnant Welsh Food, said: “We pride ourselves on the quality of our meat and on the relationship we have with our suppliers, many of them local.
“We list the farms which have produced the meat we have on sale which is all bought in whole carcasses and butchered here and if customers ask then we can not only tell them where the meat is from, we can often even give them directions to the farm.”
For more information go to www.bodnant-welshfood.co.uk
