Meat U @ Home Premium Butchers
Meet Julie & Gary Read, the small business owners behind Meat U At Home, premium butchers at The Gap Village.
We started Meat U At Home at The Gap Village in May 2017 after spending our working lives in the Meat and consumer products sectors. Gary has been a butcher since the late 1970’s and I (Julie) began my working life as a modest checkout chick, then worked up through many levels of the retail industry, having a break in the middle to bring our daughter Chloe into the world. Our combined experience gives us a leading edge in understanding retail, marketing and the importance of the family business.
Running a small business can be challenging, but we believe that by focussing on our customers, the rest will follow. We firmly believe that customer service is paramount in ensuring our customers go away happy and visit us again. Talking to our customers every day has really helped us develop the right product range. For example, our customers tell us that because life is so busy these days, the ready to cook meals we stock, such as bake at home pastries and parcels, home made pies and lasagne, burgers, kebabs etc, are just what is needed for a quick meal solution. And if you haven’t tried our range of delicious sausages them you don’t know what you’re missing! Made with QUALITY meat, our sausages are, in our humble opinion, AMAZING! We also update the range regularly to suit the season and bring out new flavours and varieties as often as possible. Most importantly, we constantly strive to keep our standards high, and source the RIGHT product at the right price.
One of our other differences is our commitment to offering food sourced only from ethically raised and humanely treated stock. For example, we are proud to have joined forces with Gooralie Pork to bring you quality RSPCA Approved free range pork grown in Goondiwindi QLD, which is genuinely 100% free range. Check them out at www.gooraliefreerangepork.com.au .Our poultry and eggs are all free range sourced from here in Queensland. We also supply the best in naturally wood smoked ham and bacon, nitrate-free ham and bacon and an assortment of locally made Qld smallgoods. Our customers here at The Gap really support our commitment in this area, for which we are very grateful.
One of the reasons we chose The Gap to open our business because it’s a special suburb that reminds us of Dayboro, where we live…it has a lovely small-town feel, friendly residents, family values and a community spirit that’s second to none. The Gap Village is the kind of centre where you can actually feel like you are working with friends – the feel of the centre is one of relaxed shopping, friendly customers and retailers and somewhere you can just “duck in” if you just need something on the way home, without having to drive around for ages to find a park and then still have to walk 10 mins to get to your shop.
Another important part of our business is the team we employ at The Gap Village, who are a fantastic bunch. The team currently consists of four full time Butchers (Clint, Eddie, Mick and Max), one full time Senior Apprentice (Kait), one senior counter person (Bel), a part time uni student (Eloise), plus seven school age students (Mackinley, Lachlan, Ruby, Cameron, Tom, Jack and Owen who work after school, weekends and holidays). And of course, Gary and myself, and our daughter, Chloe. Therefore, our business currently provides work for seventeen people in total, something that we’re very proud of.
We really appreciate the support of our loyal customers, and would also love to meet some new faces, so if you haven’t popped in to check out what we offer, please drop in to say hello!
Julie & Gary Read
Meat U At Home, The Gap Village.