Butchery chain Crawshaw benefits as customers turn to trusted meat source

The Rotherham-based firm said it sources meat only from accredited suppliers and it has not been implicated at all in the scandal.

The group said the average spend per customer is up by nine per cent in the year to January 31, thanks to multi-buy offers and £5 packs of meat.

This was partially offset by a five per cent reduction in customer numbers driven by last year’s VAT changes on cooked products.

Chairman Richard Rose said: “Our view was that such an increase would seriously impact sales and so we decided to invest in additional equipment, staff and training to implement the processes required to sell certain lines ‘on the cool’ and therefore VAT-free.”

Mr Rose said that hot sales have been adversely affected, but not by as much as the rest of the industry.

“We are pleased we adopted this approach. Nonetheless it was a disruptive, expensive 
and challenging development that we could have done without, and our performance would 
have been better without the change.”

Sales for the year were £18.8m, slightly down from the previous year’s £18.9m.

Mr Rose said the reduction in total sales was due to the scale back of less profitable products.

Like-for-like sales rose by three per cent and gross margin strengthened to 43.7 per cent, up from last year’s 43.3 per cent.

Total overheads were 1.1 per cent lower at £8m. This reduction was driven by wage efficiency improvements, ongoing overhead cost control and rent renegotiations.

Mr Rose said these factors helped to offset increased marketing expenses.

Underlying earnings for the year came in at £700,000, up from £600,000 last year.

The group made a pre-tax profit of £300,000, up from zero last year.

Crawshaw will be paying a maiden dividend of 0.2p per share. Shareholder approval will be sought at the annual general meeting, to be held on June 24, to pay the final dividend.