Hagley butcher calls for more support as business folds

A small business owner has had to close her shop and go into liquidation because of rising costs and a fall in customer spending.

Rachel Edmonds, who started The Butcheress in Hagley, Worcestershire, in 2017, and is known for her bright pink vans and logos, said the price of meat had doubled in the past six months, and at the same time, the average spend per customer had dropped dramatically.

She said increased energy and National Insurance costs meant she had been making a loss for months and she called on the government for more support for small businesses.

A Treasury spokesman said the government was pro-business and trying to create a fairer business rates system.

Ms Edmonds said: “Buying trends have changed. The expensive products like beef, lamb, fillet steak – we used to sell a lot of those. They’re now buying sausages, bacon, chicken fillets, chicken thigh meat and gammon steaks.

“They are lower cost products that obviously feed more of a family and fill them up.”

She said the average basket spend had gone from £28.30 per customer to £5 or £6 per customer and the number of customers had also dropped.

People were going to supermarkets because they had cheaper products, she added.

Ms Edmonds said the cost of beef had “more than doubled in the last six months”, adding: “I just think there’s a massive effect on the meat industry at the moment with the rising costs of meat that’s rising every week.”

She said the industry was suffering because of a number of factors, including supply shortages involving British farmers and British meat, abattoirs operating for fewer days, high costs of abattoir licences, staffing costs, transport costs, packaging costs and feed costs for animals.

“Everything is going up and it’s getting out of control,” she said.

She said she had paid out wages that were more than half her weekly turnover, and electricity was £3,000 a month for a small shop.

“How is anyone going to survive going forward? We need help from the government,” she said.

“I’m not going to be the first person to shut and I certainly won’t be the last.”

A Treasury spokesman said: “We are a pro-business government that is creating a fairer business rates system to protect the high street, support investment, and level the playing field.”

He said the government intended to permanently introduce lower tax rates for retail, hospitality, and leisure properties from next year.

He added that last year’s tax decisions had delivered on “priorities of the British people, from investing in the NHS to cutting waiting lists and putting more money in their pockets”.