Buying local - I'm puzzled

rosieben

My butcher isn't cheaper than the supermarkets but I like to support a local business that's been giving good service to our village for 25 years. Most of the meat is local, he has free range organic meat and poultry for the asking (from neighbouring counties), plus he sells local fr eggs, baked goods, preserves, you name it; I think he's worth the extra

miecherox

We are lucky enough to have two markets within reasonable distance the first I use for fruit, always get loads of fruit and veg at very reasonable prices plus I can choose exactly what I want. Then I use another market but two different stalls for our meat. So on one I get all our cooked meat and deli stuff which is always amazing and the other all our raw meat. What I love about that particular butcher is I don't feel embarrassed about saying this how much I've got in money what can we do this week! So I can budget by the £ rather than the lb if you see what I mean. He's not at all put off by this and the other week I had £5 left in my purse so decided to Get some beef for the slow cooker he just then chops a huge bit of beef off a joint. Works perfectly for me!

FatVonD

MrsRogers wrote: »

DH and I have made a decision now that EVERY Friday will be butcher day so we dont get sucked back in!

What a great idea! There can't be many of us that can afford to do ALL our shopping locally but if everyone in every town or village left one item off their supermarket list and bought it locally it'd be enough to keep all our small shopkeepers in business

MrsE_2

Bogof_Babe wrote: »

Have often read on here about how much cheaper it is to patronise your local butcher, greengrocer etc.

Apart from the fact that we don't really have any , I am puzzled as to how these small traders can charge less than the multiple supermarkets with their huge price negotiating power.

I don't doubt that local produce is better quality, but as regards money saving....???

I don't know if its down to area, but in my case the local shops tend to be quite posh farm shops & butchers, so they are more expensive than supermarkets. The produce is great - but cheaper, no.

anguk

The 2 butchers in my town are more expensive than the supermarket and their meat isn't particularly good either, lots of their stuff seems to be pre-packed or has been previously frozen and there's not much choice either.

We do have an excellent farm shop a couple of miles away, they have a butchery and the meat is fantastic, the butchers are "proper" butchers (you can see them in the back cutting the meat up), the meat is either from the farm or local but it is expensive so it's a rare treat now.

Farmers markets used to be great but now that they're "trendy" I find some of the prices are just ridiculous, I seem to spend my time walking round them saying "how much?!!".

I wish I could find a decent basic farm shop that sells good quality, cheap fruit, veg & meat. Sadly most of them round here have been "poshed up" with little coffee shops and high prices. The more popular & trendy they become the higher the prices go.

mrswive

In some areas I think that the supermarkets have pushed out small traders. In our small town there used to be 3 butchers, now there's only one. In the last few years a greengrocer has opened up, but just one for a town of about 20,000 people doesn't seem much. We have a Saturday market with 2 fruit & veg stalls but one of them I never use; they have lovely looking produce on the stall, but give you ready made up bags from behind which always contain poorer quality stuff. I once asked if I could pick my own and was told,"NO", in no uncertain terms - I haven't shopped there since!
We also used to have 2 haberdashery shops and two market stalls which sold fabric but all are now gone.
When I moved here over ten years ago there were loads of independent shops, but the little cafes now have to compete with Costa & Caffe Nero, the family owned and run bookshop is now Waterstones etc etc etc. I think that the high rents are out of the reach of all but the big chains.

celyn90

anguk wrote: »

The 2 butchers in my town are more expensive than the supermarket and their meat isn't particularly good either, lots of their stuff seems to be pre-packed or has been previously frozen and there's not much choice either.

This is the same where I live; we have a number of butchers stores, but actually, I will still buy what little meat we do eat from the supermarket through choice as I don't want it coated with five spice powder or some distrubing yellow sticky glaze. Our local greengrocer sells imported produce - and I don't see any difference between that and the supermarket.

The only thing I make a point of buying locally is cheese, as we have a fantastic cheese shop. It isn't cheap, but I wouldn't expect it to be. The only thing I refuse to buy in the supermarket; but also locally as they are of a similarly poor standard, are apples - but I have my own tree now and will plant several more when we get round to fixing the garden.

I often buy fruit and veg at the local market - but even then you don't know where it has come from. We often go to the local PYO farm during asparagus season (as it is within cycling distance), but I am simply not going to bother cycling 15 miles to pay a premium for a rucksack full of cabbage and onions.

I don't drive, so I am not going to be able to trek out to find stores. Our local small stores simply exist to sell high strength alcohol and stuff with a long shelf life; but then I don't live in a pretty little market town. The up-market area of the city is full of shops selling artisan bread, strange imported dried meat and crackers you could buy for a fraction of the cost in a Dutch supermarket. I travel too much to be sucked in by that.

I think what I am trying to say is that there are good stores and bad stores, good produce and bad produce and this will crack the decision for me rather than fact it is a supermarket or being sold out of trailer in a lay-by.

MrsRogers

Debt_Free_Chick wrote: »

Firstly, you need to be sure that you're comparing like-with-like. Supermarkets sell "braising steak" or "stewing beef" etc ... but what exactly is it? I like to know the cut of the meat I'm buying e.g. skirt, shin etc. I'm sure that Supermarkets in general sell very cheap cuts of meat at over-inflated prices, simply by giving them attractive labels. I use a lot of thriftier cuts of meat for slow cooking, but you simply can't tell what the supermarket is selling you.

Also, supermarkets tend to stock far more "prime cuts" of meat, with prices to match, than they do slow-cooking thriftier meat. We make HM beefburgers from beef skirt ... try and get that in the supermarket :eek:

Watch out for butchers that are really just meat supermarkets i.e. simply buying cuts at the wholesaler and putting them on the counter. A test for your butcher .... ask for breast of lamb. The butcher should go out to the back cold-store for this - it's so unusual for people to buy this nowadays, that they rarely, if ever, put it out on display. Butcher should then ask you if you'd like it boned & rolled and if so, he'll do it there and then.

If your chosen butcher can't supply breast of lamb, he may well be just a meat supermarket. Another "test" of mine is to ask for the soft beef bones from around the brisket. Both of these "tests" should reveal a butcher that actually buys carcasses and "butchers" them ... rather than huge vac-packed cuts of meat from the wholesaler.

You have to work a little to find a good butcher, but once you do, it might be worth making a special trip to a good butcher to stock up the freezer, rather than buying meat weekly (or more often) in the supermarket.

My conclusions are .... prime cuts of meat are more expensive and inferior quality in the supermarket. Cheap cuts of supermarket meat are "cheap for a reason" and the kind of meat I wouldn't buy at any price!

Regards

I think Debt Free Chick has made some really good observations regarding local butchers. Particularly the 'like for like' comparison of cuts and butcher meat supermarkets which sounds like what a couple of posters have described. Well worth hunting out a PROPER butcher and doing like for like comparisons.

To be honest in my opinion as much as I like to save money I much rather have 'Value for Money' ie pay the little extra for better quality or have less of a portion. A good example was today we had bacon sandwiches for lunch. Usually I put 3 piece on each sarnie as supermarket bacon cooks into nothing. Today the butcher bacon didnt shrink at all and 2 slices were MORE then enough

The_Thrilla

MrsRogers wrote: »

My husband and and I have just returned from France where we went self catering and had some fantastic meat.

I should think it would be fantastic. It won the 3.30 at Newbury.