Road to success
Sustainability drives the butchery business of these patty-makers from Palmy
THERE’S NO OBVIOUS correlation between luxury cars and burger patties, but Braden Parsons insists there are transferable skills between the two. Braden and his partner, Nicola Fitzsimons, run Moreish Premium Organic Butchery together but come from two different worlds; Nicola grew up on a Manawatū poultry farm, while Braden is a townie who used to work in the luxury car industry.
The Outstanding NZ Food Producer Awards judges didn’t put the handbrake on their superlatives when awarding Moreish’s Organic Scotch Fillet and Moreish Pure Organic Beef Burger Patties joint Emerson’s Paddock Champion. They gushed about the tender, juicy steaks with “amazing mouthfeel” and the steaky beef and great texture of the meat patties.
When it launched, Moreish had a brick-and-mortar store in Palmerston North, initially set up as an outlet to sell organic chicken from Nicola’s parents’ farm. When her parents retired and Nicola and Braden took over in 2018, they closed the store and went 100 per cent online, selling beef, lamb, chicken and pork, a brave move when customers were less savvy about shopping online for fresh food. The lockdowns in 2020 introduced many new customers to Moreish, and the business has been in overdrive since. The business now has 10 staff, including three butchers, and has built up a network of 50 certified organic farmers nationwide who supply them with carcasses year-round. In this quasi-cooperative model, Braden and Nicola visit their farmers regularly to check on how their future meat supply is tracking.
The prize-winning patties are made with minced beef seasoned with salt and pepper, and their manual production simply involves the butchers weighing the mince, rolling it flat and stamping it by hand with a patty stamp. “Moreish is a nose-to-tail butcher, and meat patties are good for using the whole animal,” says Nicola.