Push For Butchery Apprenticeships

Leamington Spa-based butchers, Aubrey Allen and supermarket Morrisons are supporting the apprenticeship push, as are smaller scale businesses.

Sarah Shufflebotham of Cheerbrook Farm Shop in Nantwich said, “We find that there aren’t any decent butchery courses around, and choose to train our staff ourselves as we do things differently to others. Rather than having part-time casuals, we want to teach someone a broad range of skills on a full-time basis including curing hams and bacon, making sausages… It’s not just a case of getting someone to do our dirty work, we want people to learn a skill and start to build a career. We try to take on our staff quite young and then mould them into our image.”

Despite the push, Cheerbrook have struggled to fill the apprentice positions on offer. “We’re looking to take on two apprentices, one for our butchery and one for our bakery, but have really struggled to find anybody. We’re more than prepared a proper rate of pay to get the right person – the usual payment for an apprentice is £2 an hour, but we plan to pay our apprentice more than this. We’ve had five applications for the butchery and one for the bakery in three weeks. We have two colleges which have food-based courses nearby, but still haven’t had much luck.”