Charles McHardy – August 2003

This butcher sells between 2½ and 3 tons of locally grown strawberries every summer. The good weather allowed this season to start two weeks early and Charles McHardy hopes to keep them coming until the end of August and have them on his table for his 60th birthday on Sunday 31st.

This month we take a closer look at a business where everything is tried to provide customers with good reasons for taking the trouble to visit the local butcher.

Most members who have visited the former Top Shop winner, Charles McHardy in Stonehaven will know just how impressive the business is and how well it merited the award in February 1997.

Even in the eyes of the fiercest critics within our industry there can be few butcher's shops that could come up to the standards of Charlie who has driven on the business after the early death of his brother and business partner, Kenneth in 1998.

What a treat it is to walk into the smartly fitted out shop and be struck with a huge array of kitchen ready products, quality meat and state of the art meat products. On the walls hang awards for almost everything there is to win both in Britain and Europe.

The beef, lamb and pork come from either Scotch Premier or McIntosh Donald. Bacon is home produced and gammons are cured for cooking. Sausages, Black Pudding, Haggis are made on the premises as well as ready meals, lots of pastries both savoury and sweet, and soup in a specially constructed area at the rear of the shop. Lentil, Potato, Scotch, Chicken and Vegetable Broth, Cream of Chicken, Cream of Broccoli – there is not quite 57 but there are lots of varieties which are sold both ready to consume and also to take home.

Anyone who knows Charlie can recognise that he runs a great operation and knows he rarely takes time to stand still. Armed with a Levanti Traiteur Mastermind oven which is on from 5.15 in the morning until 5.30 at night, he produces apple crumbles, eves pudding, strawberry tarts and meringues. These products follow on the daily schedule of rolls, scones, sausage rolls and pies.

The expansion into bakery products means that Charlie doesn't get the pie mince order from the baker across the road. Not that he minds that he retorts “that's just the way things are these days. We had the equipment and the staff so we just got on with it.”

The meringues and strawberry tarts are always strategically sited to attract people through his door.

Just to make sure the job is done right Charlie has a Datagem 2E system supplied by David Bishop
Instruments which takes temperature readings using probes at 16 locations, three times a day
which are then printed out to form a record for HACCP. Charlie has a Jeros dishwasher and all the equipment in the shop is on castors so that everything can be moved to clean the floor and walls.

Attachments:

• Charles McHardy, Stonehaven, August 2003.pdf