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Marketing lessons from an Old School Butcher

Frederick "Rick" Harris Leslie

Earlier this year my Dad passed away after a short illness. As I collected my thoughts for his eulogy I came to an unexpected realisation - my Dad was my first marketing tutor.

You see, well before I had even heard of marketing, and long before I opened my “Marketing 101” textbooks at university, I’d been receiving years of free marketing tuition from an “old school” butcher - a guy who’d left school at 14 with no qualifications to begin a career that eventually spanned 50 years.

In the early 1980s Dad (Rick to everyone else) bought a butcher shop in Levin that was on the brink of closure and, in less than two years, had turned it into a profitable business - a place where clients queued two, and sometimes three deep to be served by “their butcher”.

How did he do it? Through simple, inexpensive and practical marketing (not that he ever called it that - he’d tell you it was just common sense).

So how the hell did a guy who left school at 14 become so good at marketing? Quite simply, he understood the importance of knowing your customer and relating to them on their terms.

Presentation

First, he spruced the shop up to catch people’s attention. It was old, cold and on the dark side of the street. He couldn’t change that, but what he could do was install new signage, introduce a footpath blackboard, upgrade the window display and give the interior a clean and fresh paint. When it was done it looked like a quality butcher shop.

Promotion

Now that people were taking notice, the next step was to get people through the door. The footpath blackboard promoted daily specials, he started advertising weekly specials in the local paper, and the window display always looked a million bucks. Everything he did suggested the shop was run by an expert butcher (which it was).

Customer Service

Once people were in the shop, they had no chance - Dad wasn’t just a fantastic butcher, he was a real showman with a genuine interest in people. He had the ability to memorise names and had soon won the locals over with his mix of irreverent humour and personal service.

The kids would get a free saveloy, and there’d often be an extra sausage or meat pattie in a customer’s package when they got home. And then there was the old guy with the hens who would come into the shop and trade his eggs for meat every week.

With that sort of service the customers were soon queuing up at the counter - many of them would refuse to be served by anyone other than Dad and would wait patiently for him so they could have a yarn and a laugh.

Differentiation

Next, to create an even stronger point of difference, Dad launched his own range of sausages and meat patties - “Rick’s Meat Patties” became a very popular item. At Christmas he sold hams that were smoked on site.

It didn’t stop at meat. With a large number of retired customers, Dad launched a free home delivery service. Every week the phone orders would flood in and twice a week the station wagon would get loaded up and off he’d go on the afternoon “meat run”.

Publicity

With an eye for publicity, every now and then Dad would do smaller “meat runs” on the old butcher’s bike that had come with the shop (and he had signwritten). It was no surprise when he turned up on the pages of the local newspaper.

When the meat workers strike happened, it was Dad who was contacted by the local paper for comment.

The interesting point is, by doing all of these things, price was removed from the equation. Sure, he had regular specials to entice people into the shop, but people were happy to pay slightly higher prices for the fun of shopping with Dad.

So much so that, when a brand new supermarket offering cheaper meat prices opened directly across the street, Dad hardly noticed the difference.

All because he understood (and applied) the marketing basics and treated his customers to the sort of personal service that had them coming back to see “my butcher”.

In hindsight, the free tuition I got from my Dad was far better than any education I ever paid for.

Rest in peace Dad, and thanks for the lesson.

Frederick “Rick” Harris Leslie
15/11/1939 - 8/1/2010