Toby has become famous in Corsham, chiefly for the long line of customers outside his shop every week (and the way it extended right down the High Street during the pandemic). But he’s also famous for his customer service, and for knowing every customer’s name. We went inside the shop to find out more.
Where did it start?
For me, the journey began when I was 18 and trained as a butcher. Some 20 years later, in 2015, I was managing a shop in Swindon and had started to think about running my own business. My wife Ali was working in Chippenham and we had a little boy, 18 months then, so Googled butchers shops for sale and this one came up. While the shop was quite run down, we were sold by the town. It’s something else – like a storybook High Street. The family had such faith in me and what we could do here, so we sold our house to help fund the purchase, and before long we were in love with the place. Now we never want to leave.
And when you opened?
It was as terrifying as it was exciting. We’d put every penny into it so the fear of failure was unreal. We’d moved away from family and friends so felt pretty isolated, not knowing anyone. I was here at 5am every morning and worked across the weekend. People saw me knuckling down to make it work and I think they respected that and came in to find out more. It didn’t take long before we were manically busy and within two years we had a huge customer base and were able to purchase a home here in the town. Now I have eight members of staff, including my mum who works here two days a week in the kitchen making the baked goods like pies. We deliver across the area, too.
Our passion for what we do, and our customer service. When someone walks through the door the first thing they see is a smiling, happy face (and yes, we try to know everyone’s name!) and they have our full attention. The staff here never carry out a conversation between themselves when people are in. But the produce we sell is crucial, and has helped us pick up the awards. I can tell you exactly where the meat has come from. It’s all as locally sourced as possible and from farms with high welfare standards. I come from a farming background and so that was ingrained in my thinking, and I learned a lot from the first butcher I worked for who had the same sort of passion. Our meat is more expensive than what you might find in the supermarket, but our customers keep coming back and their word of mouth is as powerful as any social media campaign. I think we’ve grown as the interest in provenance and welfare has. But I don’t think we would have been as successful anywhere else. We were so lucky to find this town.
As soon as there was talk of lockdown sales surged. I have never sold so much meat in one week in my life. But I didn’t know which way it would go after that. Would we get shut down? Would we survive? But we were able to stay open within the restrictions so there were safely distanced queues down the High Street – right down to the other end on occasions. It was unreal. It wasn’t just about our usual customers but everyone who didn’t want or couldn’t go to the supermarket. They were often queuing for ages. I was serving one person at a time (hence the long queue outside), and we had four out the back getting deliveries ready. There was huge satisfaction in being there for local people. It was such a scary terrible time, but people still tell me that time queuing up and connecting with those next in line, and being able to come into the shop and chat to us, was so important to them. And I did feel that was a sort of accomplishment.
I have thought about going bigger, but I am already working at capacity here in Corsham. I eat, sleep and breathe my business and can’t be in two places at once and I would want to be in two places if I had a second shop. So for now, why stress myself out. Why not just stay here, on this High Street, and keep doing what I am doing?
The Cold War Bunkers…can you imagine what it was like down there?
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