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Shop Features
D Campbell & Son, Callendar – April 2012
Callander was one of the very first planned towns in Scotland and its style and location makes it a popular tourist town with tour buses visiting every day even in the winter months.
The information leaflet produced for the Callander Heritage Trail describes the wide main street that cattle were herded down even well into the 20th century. Thousands
were moved through here to the great cattle fairs or “trysts” at Doune, Stirling and Falkirk.
The tourist leaflet also highlights the oldest established business in Callander which is the butcher's shop in Ancaster Square. Peter Haggart & Co, Family Butcher is pictured with his wife, five children and an old advert depicts the heritage of the business that today is run by Neil Campbell, his wife Liz and son Colin.
Tradition is long established and Haggart is still the tag place on all the best beef that Neil Campbell buys when it is tagged at Dunblane abattoir. Neil's great grandfather and grandfather established D Campbell, Butchers in Baker Street in Stirling. His father, Dugald, worked for a couple of years with Peter Haggart before buying the Callander business in 1949.
When Neil left McLaren High School in 1967 there was no hesitation in following the footsteps of his predecessors into the meat trade. Then in 1992 when his father and
mother retired he changed the businessname to D Campbell.
The cause of the delay in promoting the family butchers under the family name had been because the local bakers by co-incidence also traded as D Campbell. The bakers had subsequently decided on Campbells as their brand and majored in capturing the lucrative shortbread trade with tourists.
Neil's wife Liz was a PE teacher before joining the business and their son Colin is now the fifth generation of Campbells to be a butcher. Colin has an HND in Hospitality Management from Glasgow Metropolitan and also worked for three years as a baker. Completing the team is Ross who has worked in the Callander shop since 1992.
The success of D Campbell, butchers and its achievement in seeing off all the other local butchers is undoubtedly built on the foundation of stocking good quality local cattle.
Every Thursday morning Neil travels the 17 miles to Caledonian Mart in Stirling to buy his cattle live. His preference is for limousin from farmer Sandy Hay at Easterton, Tibbermore but also looks out for the kind of cattle his customers enjoy from Easter Auchtermuthil and Meadowend.
Neil buys lambs live at the Stirling Mart as well and sources pork and bacon from Robertsons Fine Meats. Given the shops situation in the Loch Lomond and the Trossachs National Park, with the attraction of Loch Katrine and its position between Stirling and the West Highlands, Callander is a busy tourist town.
Campbell's trade includes an element of catering and benefits from supplying self catering units and sizeable local caravan park. Callander has become a commuter
town and is serviced by two small supermarkets but there is plenty of custom for this craft butcher. Open every day at 8 they close at 5 weekdays, 4 on a Saturday and take
a half day on a Wednesday.
They do a good trade in steak pies, make their own black pudding, haggis and white pudding. Their Lorne Sausage is extremely popular and in addition to pork and beef sausages several speciality sausages are introduced – pork with fresh chillies fairly heats up the interest! When Neil took over the reigns twenty years ago he did a major refurbishment to the front shop.
This has stood the business in good stead with all the expectations of customers and regulators these days. Now with Colin's arrival new and different products are tried and he has been dabbling with Facebook to see if younger customers can be attracted in the butchers' door. Colin has installed a flat screen monitor to inform customers about the shops' products and services and he has used the local free paper, the Ben Ledi View – to distribute offers to every household in the area.
It is clear that the Campbells keep coming although the fifth generation will encounter different challenges from those in the past. The shop sits back off the main road in Ancaster Square but it's a shop that is well worth finding. Locals mingle in with annual visitors and day trippers and Campbells' haggis ranks as one of the most popular souvenirs from a visit to Callander.
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