The Best Butcher in Wiltshire

Walter Rose & Son Butchers, Devizes

The glass-topped food displays are elegantly laid out, serpentine, like the grandest of Edwardian banquets. It is pure Mrs. Beeton: Pies, sausages, quiches, pates, blending into poultry and game birds of every description, overtaken by the glossiest of scallops, fresh, shining, great piles of fish and crustacea.

A short hop across the aisle brings you to brightly rubied cuts of the finest beef, pork and lamb products, haunches thick with rich fat, marbelled roasts and neatly trimmed chops. In the window, an extensive shop front displays mounds and mounds of chubby, coiled sausages of every description.

Unexpectedly, a tall glass jar displays fat white sugar mice, scrambling over each other to the lip of the jar. A small child stands waiting while her father shops, fingers pressed to the glass, staring intently at the treasure trove of fabulous food.

This is WALTER ROSE & SON, butchers, of Devizes.

Four generations of the Cook family have created this legendary Wiltshire icon, having purchased the business from Walter Rose in 1976.

Today, brothers Jack and Charlie head an 80-strong team of butchers and staff, providing retail products from their shop in Sidmouth St., and also catering for the needs of several food industry businesses throughout Wiltshire and the South West.

Great-Grandson Jack tells us, as we climb the thin, tight stairs to his office, that the draft through the shop is intentional; a fresh air current promotes a healthy environment for the products. The long, narrow, twin conjoined shops emit an atmosphere of cleanliness, tidiness, and carefully produced food.

“The Best…” is such a subjective term. 

When I was told by a local restauranteur that Walter Rose & Son was “The Best” in Wiltshire, I wanted to visit The Best, and decide for myself what Best really means. Different customers value different things:some prefer congenial shop staff with the gift of the gab; others seek out a recipe-loving butcher who trades cooking tips with his customers; and still other shoppers need a proprietor with an encyclopaedic knowledge of all cuts of meat. It’s hard to be everything to everyone.

A slate board outside the shop proudly displays the banner, “NATIONAL BUTCHER of the YEAR”, from the Meat Traders Journal. This takes things far beyond the subjective. This is competition with the best in the business, and Walter Rose & Son comes out trumps.

I expected our meeting with Jack to cover meat, and grazing methods perhaps, and which-chop-goes where in the anatomy of a sheep. And yet we spoke most about the people, the customer-base, the wallet-wielding locals who loyally frequent the business, in addition to the enormous wholesale base of shops, restaurants, and hotels, in Wiltshire itself and further afield.

Helping their customers

A typical Walter Rose customer used to be in the semi-retired/retired age bracket, traditional shoppers with traditional shopping methods and loyalty to their small local specialist shops. Jack wondered how to reach the next generation of consumers: the online/ smart-phone/home delivery set, with trending tastes and a weakness for efficiency in all things retail.

Education and outreach were key: inform and guide the next generation of consumers, who had money to spend and a desire to spend it well,  but weren’t confident enough to march up to the counter and ask for Chateaubriand, as opposed to a rump steak, and didn’t know a medallion from a noisette.

Helping shoppers with their purchases in the store, and providing seminars and butchery outreach programmes in the community, helped to raise a level of awareness about popular food topics: animal husbandry, health, diet and fitness, and budget-conscious menus.

Social media was also key in terms of garnering interest from the next generation. A very active Twitter, Facebook, and Instagram presence ensures that online shoppers are brought into the fold as well. A highly visible traditional bicycle-delivery service guarantees a delightful presence in the town throughout the week.

The generation of consumers caught up in the  changeover tangle between Imperial- versus- metric measurements, will continue to feel a small knot of anxiety when trying to choose amounts of product on a display counter, and will perhaps short-cut the process and buy pre-packaged, pre-weighed, pre-priced items in a supermarket.

In Walter Rose & Son, a small army of staff is on hand to guide you through the process of choosing your items, and will offer advice on amounts, recipes, cooking methods, specialty cuts, and help in any way possible to ensure that you leave happy and knowledgeable about the food you are planning to serve.

What’s their top-selling item? 

“Chicken, sirloin and fillet steaks.” Jack’s personal favourite, for best flavour, is the rump steak. Their party piece for special occasions is the Beef Wellington. Their budget best-seller is brawn, which they can barely keep in stock.

Although the shop is incredibly well-stocked with every conceivable sort of meat, poultry, game, and fish, when I ask Jack which is the real “ unsung hero of the shop”, which deserves more attention, he replied immediately “pork”, and described lean pork as being on a par with poultry, in terms of healthy eating.

“Buy fresh, undressed cuts” he recommends.

As we said our goodbyes, and made our way to the busy shop front with lunch in mind, I asked Jack to give us a top tip for customers when visiting a new butcher for the first time. He described to us an old butchery trick of taking the remainder of unsold product from one day,  and covering it in sauces and dressings for the next. “Buy fresh, undressed cuts” he recommends. You can see the meat clearly and choose the best.

My shopping bags were bulging as we left, including a stunning show-stopper Fore Rib Roast for Valentine’s Day, plump, glistening fresh-as-fresh can be scallops, and perfectly trimmed lamb noisettes. Tomorrow’s lunch will be a lovely little curiosity, “Jacob’s Ladder”: two racks of beef short ribs, perfect for my slow cooker, braised in a thick tomato sauce, pungent with smoked garlic from the Walter Rose delicatessen.

Walter Rose & Son Butchers

Website
01380 722335
21/22 Sidmouth St., Devizes, Wiltshire BA14 8AA