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Ieuan Edwards talk to SFMTA AGM 2018
Ieuan Edwards shared his journey from sales of around £700 per week into a company turning over an eight figure sum per annum and employee around 110.
He turned the clock back to when his father announced that the family farm was only big enough to employ him and Ieuan's two older brothers. “Charming I thought, made redundant at the age of thirteen.”
Ieuan's father had lined up his son a Saturday job at the local butchers. When he left school he continued his apprenticeship and gained his slaughter licence at the age of sixteen.
“I learned many things and one was to create products that create repeat sales. Sounds straight forward but how often do we really benchmark them against the best in class. Even if our products are actually the best, do we actively improve them further? In other words how much emphasis do we really put on continual improvement within our business? I carried this important lesson with me throughout my career.”
At the age of 20 Ieuan bought a butcher's shop in Conwy. His father gave Ieuan the same start in business that his father had given him.
“He announced that he would give me ten milking cows. I was indeed speechless. Thankfully my mother interjected to explain that they would give me the equivalent money to ten milking cows and not to ask for any more.”
Ieuan sold his car and he was in business and grateful to the people of Conwy who gave him great support. He was duly able to contract shopfitters Barlows to do up his shop with their standard classic look brown tile and mahogany finish. Overnight business grew by 30%.
“I couldn't believe it, the importance of a business' image and shopping environment and the power and importance again of customer perception.”
Around 25 years ago Ieuan bought an old Barclays Bank to try his new concept for a butcher's shop. “I wondered how many different ways could I sell meat. On and off the bone, marinades were coming through and I wanted to put the cooked meat into a sandwich. Why couldn't I start making pies and selling meat hot from the carvery at lunchtime. It may not sound ground breaking today but 25 years ago selling a hot carvery meal and employing chefs as well as butchers really was different.”
Not content with being Best Butcher's Shop of the Year in the UK in 2014 and Welsh Butcher's Shop of the Year for the last four years. Having observed that there was a growing interest in regional foods, Ieuan approached the Welsh Development Agency to build a BRC approved factory.
Currently they produce several million sausages per month and three quarter of a million quality beef burgers.
Asda were the first to come on board giving them four local stores on a direct to store basis. Tesco soon followed and before long he was supplying all the major supermarkets in Wales and the Border Country region. Now they supply around 800 stores, even into Hong Kong and Malaysia by the shipping container.
What makes Edwards of Conwy product so popular?
“We like to think that it is a proper butcher's product, even though it is made on a bigger scale it is very much still a butcher's product made by skilled and committed staff.
“We only use British farm assured Red Tractor shoulder pork in our sausages, nothing else. We buy and cut up chuck rolls for our beef and steak burgers. We also need to work very hard to hit around ten tons of bacon per week quickly.”
Ieuan stressed that you need a properly funded marketing budget.
“This depends upon where you are on your journey, if you are happy with where you are then you don't spend too much money on marketing, you just need to sustain your market share and where you are.
“We are in the middle of a growth plan so we need to support this and currently invest several hundred thousand a year on marketing. It covers costs such as brand awareness, campaigns, social media campaigns, Twitter and Facebook ads, radio and TV campaigns. We have just cut back a bit our instore sampling team from around 20 instore sampling's per month.
“You need to review your marketing spend to ensure that you are not throwing money away. We check customer awareness to test if our marketing is working.”
Part of Ieuan's scrutiny was on how much real time tv his potential customers were viewing. He showed an ad he had placed on Wales online as an example of what can be done for very little money. Marketing intelligence dictates the overall strategy.
Ieuan Edwards ended with a controversial finish:-
“I think that to ensure a bright, profitable and sustainable future we may need to be experts in the art of manufacturing not only our current meat offering but also non meat, meat style products.
“If you don't believe me then take a look at the Impossible Burger. An American Burger product made by the Impossible Meat Company that does not contain any meat yet it looks like meat. It actually tastes like meat, it's texture is that of meat and it even looks like meat medium rare when it is cooked.
“They have discovered a plant root extract that actually bleeds on cooking. They are not targeting vegetarians, they are targeting meat eaters. It says on it 'it is here – a delicious burger made entirely from plants for people who love meat.
“It is estimated that by the year 2025 that a family of four will have at least one vegetarian or vegan member with at least two family members subscribing to the ideology of being a flexatarian.
“The future is bright it really is, but in my opinion the future will be based on meat and non meat style products. I predict that we will see a dramatic change in people's diets within the next ten year period.
“I am not talking about next century, I am talking about the here and the now. As an industry we must be one step ahead and also prepare ourselves to grasp this opportunity. We have got to cater for the whole family otherwise they will go to the supermarket where they will be able to buy everything for their family meals.”
Looking at the future in his Conwy butchers' shop, Ieuan described his award winning products, pies and cooked meats, his recently launched Welsh Bistro Steaks. By introducing these established and new products this will hopefully help him stay on track to double sales over the next five to seven years.
“I am also very excited about the role of advanced machinery and robotics will undoubtedly play within my manufacturing business in the very near future. For example x-ray machines that map the muscle and then laser cutting machines cutting it accurately without waste.
“However I won't be buying such a machine for my shop as my shop is a different concept altogether. The shop is all about being an artisan butcher.”
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