Craft Butchers and Climate Change: Talking positively to your customers

Customers these days are extremely interested in climate change and sustainability, during COP27 and January this may increase. Increasingly customers are asking about these issues and want to know where your meat comes from and how the animals were raised and fed. This eat less but better trend is a fantastic opportunity for craft butchers to stress their many positive climate credentials. See our Ten Top Tips below.

There has been much misinformation about meat production in recent times, including exaggerated claims that reducing meat consumption is a major way for individuals to reduce their personal carbon footprint. This has resulted in a growing ant-meat sentiment which is seen by many butchers as a major threat to our industry.

Positive Conversations

To assist industry counter this, threat the levy bodies (QMS, AHDB and HCC) have updated a toolkit to help you have positive conversations around meat. You can find the link here (LINK)

The pack has a great deal of valuable information all of which is based on sound science, and contains links to other sources of information, articles and social media channels.

The pack also covers subjects such as methane emissions, water-usage, chemical fertilisers, carbon sequestration, biodiversity, flood protection, rural economies, and topsoil depletion.

Ten top tips:

• Welcome questions from customers and thank the person for asking
• Stay positive and confident and stick to areas you are comfortable with
• Stick to known facts. Learn a few from the pack. Especially use the first two bullet points above. They are killer facts!
• Stress your local products and local supply chains
• Know where your meat comes from
• Mention how craft butchers are benefiting from the eat less but better trend – talk it up as much as you can
• Respect the choice of vegans and vegetarians- each to their own
• Never argue or get angry
• Involve your staff in this subject generally and encourage their participation in spreading the word. Great for morale.
• Adopt sustainable procedures – e.g., Recyclable, and reduced packaging, energy use, insulation, waste management, transport etc.
• And lastly, remember-old fashioned quality and good personal service remain vital and are your unique selling point.

Download the toolkit: https://www.qmscotland.co.uk/sites/default/files/qms_cop27_toolkit_v10.pdf