MEMBER SPOTLIGHT: What a year for Warkworth Butchery!

2022 has been a great year for Warkworth Butchery - they were named the supreme bacon winner in the 100% New Zealand Bacon & Ham Awards, took out two gold medals at the Great New Zealand Sausage Competition and have launched a whole new online presence. But it hasn’t been an easy road, or a quick win - Rob and Renee Lees bought the butchery nine years ago and have been slowly growing and progressing in the industry.

Rob (who in 2020 took out the title of Pure South Master Butcher of the Year) realised to be serious and successful in moving forward he needed to take the time to ‘work on the business’ rather than ‘in it’. He’s now lucky enough to have a fantastic team of five butchers and a couple of shop staff who are more than capable of taking care of the day-to-day running, so he’s been able to focus more on the business side.

We asked Rob a few questions on how he’s found the year – tune in for some hints and tips if you are looking to grow your business both physically and online.

We know you have an awesome team onboard with you, tell us about your staff.

Yes, we do have an amazing crew! Having great dynamics is something we work hard at. We’ve got a fairly young team, all with good knowledge, top ethics and loads of drive. Having them onboard has enabled me to steer the horse rather than whip it! It’s amazing how busy you can be in a butchery without using a knife!

How were bacon sales after you won the supreme bacon award for your Dry Cured Middle Bacon?

Firstly, I’d like to say we were very stoked to win this award, most independent shops produce great bacon so come up trumps was very humbling.

Our sales initially went through the roof - everyone had to try it - even those that bought bacon off us every week (but usually a purchased different cut such as streaky).

The win created great chat in and around the shop. There was also a great knock-on effect for cafes we supply to being able to adjust their menus to advertise the bacon as New Zealand’s best!

After you won the supreme award there was a decent amount of media attention initially. How did you leverage from that after the interviews and media died down?

Yip, at first it did seem like a 12-month award that lasted four weeks!

However, we are lucky here as we have a staggered release of local papers (whether it be fortnightly or monthly), so we managed to gain some longevity - which meant getting congratulated 6-8 weeks later! This was great as it meant when we had people talking about us, then new people finding out about us which created good organic advertising.

We heard you also won an award from the Junction Magazine* this year. Can you tell us about that?

Again, super stoked to win this as it is a peoples vote which I think speaks volumes!

We have always done pretty well in the ‘J’ awards in past years, winning categories and coming runner up, but to be voted Top Shop ‘22’ was something else and the start of a successful accolade year. We also won an amazing advertising package with them.

*Boutique magazine highlighting Puhoi, Mangawhai and and everything great in between.

The new website looks great! Can you tell us about how you found the process of developing a new website and any teething problems you came across?

We have had an online presence for a while now but it definitely needed a shake up! I contacted a family friend to help rebuild the site using Shopify, while we took all the product images ourselves, wrote the content and took care of recipe sourcing (for example using recipes.co.nz and pork.co.nz).

It was absolutely mind blowing for me as definitely not my forte, but I was keen to have it accurately reflect the store and story.

It’s now an easier, faster, and more manageable site with a lot more products online – giving a wider audience an insight into what’s through the doors!

How have you changed the way you do things on social media (and why)?

Unfortunately, while on the road to upping our social media presence, we’ve encountered quite a few difficulties with Facebook – we’ve been hacked, duplicated, spammed and banned from boosting posts! This was far from ideal as at the time we were trying to spread the good news of our awards.

But looking on the bright side, at this point we had won advertising in Junction, and were running a couple of half pages in our local Mahu Matters so had this going while we deleted our old page and worked on growing a new one. Too receive, I believe you have to give!

A couple of $100 meat pack giveaways here and there, helped us drum up numbers quickly on Facebook to a base we could use as a platform for to start sharing content which now working well for us again. Social media takes energy and drive for sure, even just to come up with content, but it’s important to stay relevant and keep moving forward.

The RMNZ competitions and events are great to share via social – even just sharing with your customers that you are entering and then the journey of being judged, being a finalist and the awards themselves.

Rob Lees, Warkworth Butchery

What other communications and advertising channels have you implemented this year?

We do a monthly newsletter which recipients can sign up to via our website, and we usually do a some radio advertising once or twice a year.

But thinking outside the square, in October we kicked off a 3-month campaign advertising on the back of a bus (predominantly around Silverdale and Whangaparaoa), using our supreme bacon as the headline. Cost wise, I was pleasantly surprised with the rate for this – it was very reasonable and in my opinion, a good option to throw into the advertising mix.

Can you share with us results from any of the above marketing/comms activities?

It’s hard to say at this stage as we have got a bit going on all at once – but we are definitely on the up!

Your butchery is iconic in your local area, what type of community involvement and programmes are you involved in? Why is this important.

This iconic butchery is 118 years old next year after the Browns Mill (Warkworth’s original name) general store became a butchery in 1905. It changed families three times before the infamous Stubbs bought it in 1922 holding it for three generations, parting ways in 1997 (again swapping owners approx. every three years) until we bought it in 2014. We are super proud of being a part of the history and legacy here!

As soon as we arrived, I knew that smallgoods should be our identity and that community support was very important. For me it’s all about kids and sports - we are very generous in supporting local sports clubs and events in our community but also feel the support is there for us!

Good Food comes from a Good Home. Warkworth Butchery is your local, family-run butchery, serving honest, quality food.