Pat Whelan comments at Centenary AGM

The Federation was delighted to welcome Pat Whelan of James Whelan, Clonmel, Ireland as one of our centenary meeting speakers on Sunday 18 November. He showed a mightily impressive company video before giving his opinion on several emerging industry issues.

“I have travelled the whole world looking at business and looking at meat, looking at the way forward and trying to see where the future is in meat. Dry aging is the most discussed and most misunderstood subject on the planet bar none.

“Consumers look at the age and length of age as a barometer for quality. They can see a 100 day old steak and think that must be amazing but in actual fact what I have learned is that dry aging is about a number of different things.

“I think it is gender specific, breed specific, age or weight specific and to have one rule fits all for dry aging I am. It too sure that is the correct approach. We have got to a point in Whelan's where we have been killing carcase meat all a long, we are now killing them under 24 months. The carcases are aged between 14 and 21 days depending upon the weight of the carcase.

“We have done trials with all sorts of mechanics around salt, ionisers, shields that are supposed to do something about bacteria, to introducing moisture, taking out dehumidifiers to put in extra fans. That went on for five or six years and over the last two years we have recognised somebody who on these two islands does an amazing job on dry aged beef.

“We have launched a supply partnership with Peter Hannan in the north (Moira, NI). We recognise that we couldn't do what he does and he does it amazingly well. We are delighted to add dry aged beef to our offering because there is customer demand for it. He is the master and he has become a partner.”

Dripping
“It goes back to the pride. I remember my grand aunt making dripping. The story goes back to my approach to sustainability and I was in the boning room a number of years ago when a guy phoned me on the mobile. He does waste collection and he told us that instead taking the bone and fat at whatever he was giving us a kilo at the time, he was going to be charging from next week.

“On my sustainability journey that jarred with me and later when I was having lunch with my parents I just asked them what they did with bone and fat. We had a long conversation and my mother told me about dripping.

“I remembered the dripping being made and that after afternoon I made some dripping. When I took it home to my wife that night, having set she was tasting it and she said bring the same home tomorrow.

“I had some external body fat, some kidney suet and some channel fat. We rendered them independently of each other and she started to blend them. You think fat is fat until you actually separate the fats. We experimented and came up with a blend and then we needed a bag.

“I went all over the UK trawled the internet, used Twitter and Facebook. I had a picture on an online site asking if there was anyone who could supply these bags. I went over to London one day and went round all the antique shops and bric a brac shops hoping that I could come across something that would be like it. I couldn't find a thing.

“The bag has to have a lining to take the hot oil. It is. It just any bag, the gusset has to be strong enough that it doesn't leek. I was coming home on the plane and raking through seat pocket and I discovered a bag. It was light and perfect, I had a real eureka moment. I photographed the bag and I was in the office of the manufacturer of the bag two or three days later.

“We couldn't get the shape of it right but we got everything else right. Part of its charm is its character, it is a bit coarse looking but dripping is something substantial and almost doesn't deserve modern packaging. It deserves the type of retro packaging that it does have. It formed its own character and personality but behind it was great pride.

“Then the Tipperary Food Producers wanted to enter Great Taste so every member put a product forward. We put forward our dripping just to play our part in that community. In actual fact the dripping went on to win three stars and then the supreme champion at the Great Taste Awards.

“So something that started with a very negative phone call and a great lunch with my mum and dad turned into a product that is now the most sought after piece of the whole thing. It is just an incredible journey with the discovery of the bag. I wanted to preserve the tradition, the look and feel of it, authentic and something I was proud of. It sells at £4.95 for a 500 gram pack.

“There are a lot of young people in the room and if you only take one thing from it, the future is really bright in the trade once you know what you are about. The key thing to understand is what you are about.

“That can whatever you choose it to be but stick to it because your customer will respect you for that, understand you for that and always expect you to deliver that. It is when you change midstream from one to the other or follow the market or follow a trend that can be confusing for the customer.

“Remember the lifetime value of a customer is what we all need to concentrate on. It is not the today, tomorrow or next week, it is the impact of the lifetime value. Put that in monetary terms, value that through friendship whatever way you want but you need to look at your customers differently. They are stakeholders in your business, if you don't understand that the game is over.”

Pat was talking after showing a most impressive video where wordsmiths had been at work to describe not just the trust and passion required but the “theatre of retail”, suggesting we should “collaborate with nature”. Where did Pat get all the ideas?

“If you look where retail is going, it is incumbent on smaller retailers to understand where the future is. The way the industry is going and the way people's lifestyle is changing two things come home to me and are really strong.

“People are looking for experience around any purchase that they make. Whether it is meat or whatever, they are looking for experience and people who will go that extra mile. Service is evolving into experience so it needs to be more than service. Hello, are you having a nice day and so on have been there forever. To keep doing the same thing and expecting different results is insanity as we were told earlier.

“So service is evolving, and how is it evolving? It is evolving around experience. How you differentiate in the market? You always have to have a USP. Whatever you are doing you need to differentiate. It is as easy to use glass as it is to use stone walls but there has to be real meaning behind it and your customer needs to understand you.

“If you are about quality and service you need a quality environment that reflects the ethos of what you are about. That then becomes theatre because people are having the experience.

“The other thing that I am passionate about is that the future of the meat trade will be where people will eat less but eat better. I think that we are all agreed on that, we just need to demonstrate to the customer that we are behind that.”

Attachments:

• PAT_WHELAN_COMMENTS_181118.MP3