An innovative Gloucestershire goat meat supplier has carved out new markets after sales were hit by Covid, raising £250,000 through crowdfunding to support the venture.
Cabrito was created by James Whetlor and his partner Sushila in 2012 after learning of the plight of male kid goats in the dairy industry. Appalled at the wasteful practice of routinely euthanising them, the entrepreneurial duo worked with a local farmer, selling them into top London restaurants.
But when the pandemic forced many restaurants to close, the couple had to immediately re-examine their business model.
Mr Whetlor, who is also the author of internationally acclaimed cookery book, Goat: Cooking and Eating , and has been recommended by a number of top chefs, said lockdown measures had all but made their business obsolete.
“Our customers were restaurants,” he said. “The pandemic meant we had to reshape the retail side of the business, expand our online sales and sell directly to the consumer. But selling direct to consumer requires a more complex butchery process than selling to the trade, and that put pressure on our outsourced supply, so we needed another solution.”
Mr Whetlor contacted East Yorkshire-based modular specialist Fisher UK after reading about its extensive experience in manufacturing bespoke units for the game and food processing industries.
The two companies quickly set about designing a solution that would enable Cabrito to bring carcase processing in-house to better serve online retail customers, with crowdfunding raising more than £250,000 in under a month. A commitment to producing ethical, sustainable meat struck a chord with investors on the Crowdcube platform.
This enabled Fisher UK to design, build, deliver, install and commission the site all in under six months. Mr Whetlor said the butchery facility has enabled the business to grow online sales as well as open up conversations with food manufacturers supplying large multiple retailers, as they can now offer the security of supply required at this end of the market.
He added working with Fisher UK had saved them a lot of headaches when it came to finding the right solution.
“From start to finish, the whole process has been very convenient,” he said. “The installation team were clean and efficient, meaning the units were installed with minimal fuss and disruption. We have already employed two full time butchers in the business since receiving the building and we have the capacity to more than double this as the business grows.”
Jonathan Fisher, managing director, described the unit as a “plug in and play Food Standards Agency cutting plant”.
“We created a pre-fabricated, fully functional food processing site that can be purchased like a piece of machinery,” he said. “The capacity can easily be extended by adding two or three more modules as the business grows.
“It is a far more cost effective, flexible, and less disruptive solution than building something on site or having to move to a bigger premises, both of which would have had significant impacts on Cabrito’s production. Our solution ensured there was no disruption to that at all.”
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