Butcher aims to be a prime cut above with award judges
ENTERPRISING KEVIN HORN HAS NEW IDEAS TO ENTICE SHOPPERS
WHILE you may think of a local butchers as a staple from the good old days, one Surrey shop is hoping to remain relevant by doing things a bit differently.
Surrey Hills Butchery only opened last May, but has already captured attention with its modern take on a traditional profession.
The Tongham-based shop runs out of a refurbished barn at the Hogs Back Brewery. The star of the show is Kevin Horn, 35, who has been named a finalist in a Countryside Alliance competition to find the best butcher in the South East. Kevin is one of five butchers nominated, but the only one from Surrey.
He sees the award, which is voted for by the public, as a recognition of the hard work he has put in to make the butchery different. When asked for his secret to success, he said it was simply, “putting quality in the window, not dropping the standards and keeping up with the times”.
Kevin has been a butcher since he was a teenager, and said: “I was 13. I walked from one end of Fleet High Street to the other asking for a Saturday job. There were only two shops left, one of them being a butchers, and they offered me a Saturday job and I’ve never really looked back.
“I still love it, just as much as I did when I started. I mean, it’s not what it’s stereotypically shown to be, like when you see Fred Elliott on Coronation Street back in the day and he’s walking around covered in blood and all that. It’s not anything like that. It’s great to learn a craft and trade. It’s the customer relations as well, when you get the feedback from the customers is just unbelievable. That’s what the buzz is.”
Kevin is even more driven to win the award after learning that the person who nominated him had died. He added: “I want to win this for her. It would mean the world to be honest. Obviously, it would mean the world in my job and to get some recognition of the 20-plus years that I’ve been doing it.”
He said the key to his success is not to make things too complicated, adding: “When we get home from work, the last thing we want to be doing is cooking. So what we wanted to do is make a lot of oven-ready products. So, once you’re home, you get the best quality meat with nice, quick and easy, tasty meals that are 180 degrees in the oven for 30 minutes. People just want nice, quick, easy cooks and to know how long to cook it for.”
This means the shop does not just sell meat, but also has “lots of sauces, gravies and preserves that go from breakfast to dinner”. While the shop does contain some rarer breeds meat like British Wagu, Kevin mainly sticks to pork, beef, lamb and chicken, but with a twist to make them stand out above the rest.
Keeping up with the times also means considering the cost of living. Kevin said he combats this by adding “cheaper but more flavourful and beautiful steaks into the window. So you can still eat the best quality meat that you possibly can without breaking the bank”.
The butcher’s prime location means it has real relationships with local farmers. Kevin said: “We’re surrounded by farms and we all know them personally. We can venture to the farm to see the animals, we regularly go to see them as well. We have a local abattoir just down the road that they can all go to which creates less stress in the animals.”
This means he knows all there is to know about the meat, adding: “We get all sorts of traceability on all our beef and lamb and pork, so we can tell you the exact farm they’re from.”
Voting for the award closed on Monday. Opening times and more information about Surrey Hills Butchers can be found at https:// surreyhillsbutchers.com/