AMIC 2022

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CUSTOMER SERVICE / VALUE

Our strategy is simple – just pay attention! Quality product first & foremost, backed by customer service that exceeds people’s expectations. My belief is that you can be the best at anything in the world, but if you can’t relate to people, no one’s going to want a bar of it so I really enforce that with my staff.

You can teach people how to cut meat to the standard that I require, but it’s all about building relationships and having that personal touch with people because that’s what our customers come to us for. In today’s world with everything moving forward so fast with technology, there is still a massive market for people who want to talk face to face, who want to be remembered, who want to know the person that served them last time and build that relationship. I think it’s essential. That’s what butchers have done for hundreds of years.

We provide value to our customers through providing consistent quality, premium product backed by knowledge & guidance in terms of provenance, cooking methods & pairing suggestions.

MEAT AT BILLY’S 24/7 – We’re also very good at backing this up online via our recipe & cooking tips blog. This means even when our stores are closed, our customers can still access cooking instructions, tips & recipes. We often have interstate (sometimes international) visitors on our website looking up how long to cook a rib fillet roast or what’s the best lamb roast for them.

I’m proud to say that three of my staff have recently reached their 10 year anniversary milestone as Meat at Billy’s employees. Peter Herman, Emma Daley & Ben Webb all began their Meat at Billy’s career at the Ashgrove store in its infancy. Having staff on hand that have so much experience & knowledge of the business is not only beneficial to me, but this depth of experience of course translates into the quality of service they can provide for our customers. Peter remains at Ashgrove, Emma is now based at Head Office & Ben, who started as the Ashgrove apprentice, is now managing our Rosalie store.

Our commitment to providing impressive customer service is the reason the business has grown continually since 2009. Putting quality first, paying close attention to customers & their needs, being transparent and owning any mistakes we might make along the way, ultimately builds trust. It sounds simple but hitting these marks consistently involves an ongoing & conscious team effort. When customers trust you, they’ll go out of their way shop with you and become an advocate for you. They’ll come to you for their everyday basics through to their special occasion purchases and the only once every now and then purchases.

BUSINESS PLAN & STRATEGIES

In January we had made the decision to relocate the more labour intensive processes of the store to our new central warehouse (in Windsor). These processes included sausage & burger production and also the breaking down of pigs & lambs.

The decision to move these process was made for several reasons but most importantly to allow our store staff to focus more on the customer service experience.

Secondly, having all main production elements of the business coming from one location was done to improve the overall quality & consistency of our products between our two bricks and mortar stores & the online store. Our goal is to have the most cohesive customer experience possible no matter what store or service our customers are using.

Our next major business plan for 2022 was a new & 4th venue set to open mid 2022. Unfortunately however the February floods has postponed this. A 4th venue was set to open that would showcase our products & produce ready cooked meals eg. whole cooked lamb shoulder, porchetta, lasagne for all three of our stores. This has now been postponed until early 2023.

STORE INNOVATION

With many of the more labour intensive processes having been removed from our stores, time and thought for evaluation & creativity increased exponentially.

The focus was moved to creating new, non meat products to accompany our existing meat lines. These have now become an additional upsell option that also provides further convenience for our customers.

The new lines include Truffled Mashed Potato, Vegetable Tray Bakes, and Compound Butters. Sales of these items has been hugely successful and has solidified for us that this will be a growth area for us moving forward.

More focused product specific, marketing campaigns have also been able to be implemented.

Retail counter displays have now also improved. Products in prime retail position have been rotated more regularly and line up with specifically timed social media marketing. These mini campaigns are based around either calendar events eg. dry age releases, football grand finals, thanksgiving, cooking styles or specific themes like ‘supporting local’.

Planned out campaigns like these have proven very successful and we definitely see a higher sell through rate. When a customer comes into our store, they have in many cases already seen these specific products through our newsletter or social media feeds and are therefore already familiar with them eg. more likely to purchase.

We’re very much looking forward to offering even more new lines in 2023 with our pre cooked, re heat only meal options when our fourth venue opens.

The pride and joy of the store is still the shop front window display. An incredible amount of time, effort & creativity goes into building them from scratch each morning. They are a work of art and they show what Meat at Billy’s truly represents – care, quality, passion, creativity and attention to detail. We know it’s appreciated by the number of people who stop and admire on a daily basis.

We also place a strong importance on creating and offering cooking advice for the best results possible. Again, we want to build trust… We provide cooking instructions & recipes for these lines, all of which are available online and in store. They remove the guess work & allow people to cook with confidence. Offer people a solution for a problem (sometimes they don’t even realise they have eg. lack of time & skill) and they’ll love you for it. When they have a good experience, they’ll be back for more and also have enough confidence in you to try something different next time.

We also pay a lot of attention to our non meat product range. We continually seek out local, quality complimentary products to enhance our meat offering. Our in store shelving looks premium and encourages browsing and making additional purchases.

Community Involvement

From the day Meat at Billy’s opened its doors, Billy has been generously donating to various local schools, sporting teams, community groups & charities. It’s just always been a part of what we do.

Meat at Billy’s proudly sponsors a wide range of sporting clubs within the local area. Billy loves to think that over time he will be sponsoring teams in most ball sports that are played. These include:

GPS Rugby ClubDowney Park Netball Association
The Gap Dragons Junior AFL Club
The Gap Football Club
Hounds of Graceville Touch Football Club
North’s Women’s Hockey Club
Valleys Cricket Club
Brisbane’s first ever Ice Hockey team (yes, Brisbane has an Ice Hockey team!!!)

The sponsorship of these clubs has been in place for many years in some cases, plays a strong role in the continuing viability of these clubs.

Each store deals with certain local community clubs in their own localities directly.

The demand for donations of food has increased greatly and Meat at Billy’s is working closely with two organisations who are doing a fantastic job providing meals for those who need it most:

BeefBank – regular donations are made to BeefBank where they are used for meat packs for distribution to the needy or turned into meals for the less fortunate in our community;

Communify – donations are used to prepare meals for families suffering domestic violence or homelessness.

There wouldn’t be a school in our area that hasn’t been a recipient of Billy’s generosity. Whether it be in the form of a donation (think sausages, burgers, meat trays and gift vouchers) or sponsorship of a major school fundraising event. Some (but not all of these) include:

Bardon State School
Mount St Michaels
St Ambrose’s Catholic Primary School
Marist College Ashgrove
Ferny Hills State School
Milton State School
Saint Finbarrs Primary School
Oakleigh State School
Padua College Kedron
Mount Samson State School – Donations
Toowong State School
Gaythorn Community Kindy
Marist College Ashgrove Swim Club
St Columba’s Primary School
Holy Cross Prinar School Wooloowin
Alderley Kindy
Rainworth State School
Banks Street Newmarket Kindy
Marter Dei Primary School
Bardon Community Kindy
The Gap State School
Ashgrove State School
Everton Park Child Care
Newmarket State School
Our Lady of the Assumption Primary School
Mt Nebo State School
Rosalie C&K Kindergarten

A selection of other local charities and organisations that have received donations include:

Hear and Say
Ashgrove Irish Community
Let’s Go
Rotaract
WANTZ Committee
Brisbane Reclink Community Cup
Ghana Paediatric & Neonatal Nursing
Irish Dance Qld
Think Pink Morning Tea
Dreams 2 Live 4
Meals on Wheels Ashgrove
Exceptions Kids Occupational Therapy
First Light Widowed Association
Nexus Care
Grange Thistle Soccer Club
Movember
Rotary Club of Ashgrove Gap Christmas Carols
SHAPE

INDUSTRY COMMITMENT

SUPPORTING LOCAL FARMERS
We pride ourselves on being able to source great farm direct produce from smaller Queensland farms. It’s certainly a much easier option to buy straight from a larger meat retailer but by building these relationships we not only help the farmers but we’re then able to work with them directly in terms of feedback & quality control in order to produce the kind of quality on the product that we want. This also means that we’re able to offer our customers something that most other retailers can not.

Bronwyn & Dave at 9Dorf Farms have been our pasture chicken & egg supplier & Sophie from Bellevue Dorpers, one of our lamb suppliers for may years now. This year we forged a new farm direct relationship with another pastured Dorper lamb supplier – Domville Dorpers, and look forward to working with them for years to come.

TEAM DEVELOPEMENT
We hold regular team meetings and training sessions. With three different sites it’s imperative that we all come together regularly throughout the year to encourage cohesiveness across the group. We use this time to inform & educate everybody on changes within the business such as new procedures, IT updates, promotions, charity related work and general news.

We also use this opportunity to further educate the team in terms of product & supplier knowledge. It can include guest speakers, product sampling, cooking demonstrations all with the aim of supplying our team with the tools they need in order to provide all of the information a customer needs to cook with confidence at home.

Our next session on October 12th is a product training session with local Brisbane Charcuterie Producer – Saison Small Goods. We’re also including a wine tasting session covering basic ‘how to choose the appropriate wine’ for staff to be able to make more helpful suggestions for pairings with their customer’s meat purchases.

WORLD BUTCHERS CHALLENGE
In September this year Billy travelled to Sacramento with one of our Ashgrove apprentices, Gabe Mahoney to assist in coaching him and the other junior Australian Butcher Team members competing in the World Butchers Challenge.

While he was there he was amazed to the see the professionalism of the industry on that world wide platform. It was incredibly motivating & encouraging to see our industry so strong.

AMIC APPRENTICE OF THE YEAR
Our most recent apprentice at Ashgrove, Ben Butcher (yes that’s actually his name!!!!) competed in the AMIC Apprentice of the Year competition under Billy’s guidance. Like Gabe, in the lead up to these comps Billy spends one on one time with the staff in training sessions to prepare for each event.

He encourages & supports staff both financially & emotionally when it comes to entering into competitions like these. It’s a long term investment into skills, knowledge & confidence.

WORTHY OF NOTE
Our staff training program at the Ashgrove store has been very successful. Both our Rosalie store manager Ben (10yrs) and one of the assistant managers, Fraser (5yrs) are both ex Ashgrove apprentices and honed their skills at this store.