It can be quite the battle these days to get people to focus on value rather than price. The two are not interchangeable. It is also a folly to compare sectors. Wearing a low quality t-shirt cannot be compared to eating low quality or poor food.
Before we get to the value over cost debate it’s important to ask ourselves why we eat in the first place. While I’m aware that the industry has spent a fortune in linking food with lifestyle and creating a veritable past time out of all things ‘foodie’, eating is not a ‘hobby’ and eating good food is not a luxury, nor should it be considered the preserve of the rich.
In a modern, first world country, like the one we are blessed to live in, we need to take a step back and ask ourselves some questions. Have we lost all sense of respect for our health and well being when we only use price as a guide to what we eat? Are we just blindly ignoring the blatantly obvious correlation between what we eat today and our health tomorrow and the associated costs of sickness and disease? Do we leave our thinking brains at the door of the supermarket and get sucked into the idea that food with a long shelf life is acceptable when the truth is the shorter the shelf life the fresher the food. Why do we blindly count calories without ever considering the energy value of the calorie; not all calories were created equal.
In any business there are three main pillars. You will often hear it discussed as “Price, quality, service; pick two”. The theory is that you can only build a business on two of the three. Look at any retail business and you can easily pick out the top two core values they operate from. Personally, I don’t run my business from this expert point of view. Instead I essentially approach it by asking why we eat in the first place. I believe we eat first and foremost to nourish our bodies with energy giving and life supporting foods in order to live long, healthy and productive lives. Secondly, I consider taste and variety. Thirdly we constantly keep that difference between value and price at the forefront of our minds. 
I appreciate choosing value and quality over price may seem difficult given the financial demands of modern day living. Families are acutely aware of this in the present back to school season. Our little bundles of joy seem like bottomless walking money pits at this time of year as we contend with the costs of school books, school bags, school uniforms, stationery, voluntary contributions to the school and shiny new lunchboxes. I can quite understand how there is a tight budget left for the contents of those same shiny new lunchboxes! However for many of us, myself included, we have allowed our children to be taken over by hype and advertising. We are happy to shell out over the top for the special lunchbox with One Direction, Peppa Pig or the Marvel Comic characters adorning the front, while we baulk at paying a little extra for the better quality content of the sandwiches the little boxes will eventually hold. So One Direction, the Peppa Pig creators and Spiderman’s inventor get rich while your child’s diet becomes poor.
In an average supermarket the shopper is constantly faced with these choices and I know it can be a minefield. Usually supermarkets stock three ranges, the value range, the mid price range and the luxury range. Some people believe that the only difference is the packaging, but I can tell you it’s not as simple as that. Looking at meat offerings in particular for example I can see how the large bulky value pack of mince meat is often chosen over the Irish steak mince in the obviously smaller pack with the greater price tag. I can honestly tell you that you would be better off buying the smaller pack and bulking it out with vegetables and grains. This is a mindset we need to acquire. It is always better to buy the smaller local free range chicken than the large water injected, battery reared chicken. Eating less of greater quality is always to be preferred when it comes to food. Why? Because food is fuel.
Would you knowingly put cheap, substandard petrol in your car? Of course you wouldn’t. More to the point, would you put fake petrol in your car? Not a chance! While the fake petrol may get you from A to B in the short term, the long term damage it would do to the car’s engine would prevent you choosing it every time. Yet we constantly buy ‘fake’ food; items that are over processed and stripped of all goodness or food created from chemicals in a laboratory that never existed outside a test tube.
At James Whelan Butchers all our food is real food. The meat we sell is nutritious, natural and supportive of health and well being. We know our suppliers, we know where they are and I can honestly say that some of my customers travel from a further distance to my shop than the meat and produce that we sell. I am aware of the provenance of every item of food inside the door of my shop; I’ve always known it.
At James Whelan Butchers we are constantly aware of the financial pressures families are under and so we strive creatively to make best quality into best value. Come and see our range of ready to cook foods. If I’m honest I don’t want people shopping at James Whelan Butchers because we have the cheapest meat in town. I want people to come because they know they will get quality, excellent service and the best value for money around. Surely your family is worth it. I welcome your feedback to [email protected]
We hope you enjoyed reading this post by Pat Whelan of James Whelan Butchers. Pat is a 5th generation butcher, cook book author and the director of James Whelan Butchers with shops in Clonmel, the Avoca Handweavers Rathcoole and Kilmacanogue, Dunnes Stores Cornelscourt, Rathmines and Swords in Dublin. Sign up to our newsletter for more updates from James Whelan Butchers
Tags: Avoca Butcher Rathcoole, Back to school, foodie articles, James Whelan Butchers, Pat Whelan, price, quality, service
