Appleton's: Meet the owners of four pork butchers in Yorkshire keeping 150-year-old charcuterie traditions alive

Christmas is just as much a big time for pork butchers, as it is for its counterparts that have beef, lamb, pork and poultry, with the large pork pie and joints of ham being seasonal Boxing Day fayre.

Appleton’s is run today by husband and wife team Anthony and Isabel Sterne who took over the Ripon pork butcher’s shop in the Market Place thirteen years ago and recently won a Deliciously Yorkshire Taste Award for their Old Style Bacon. They’ve added to their portfolio with shops in Wetherby (2014), Boroughbridge (2016) and Knaresborough (2020) that Anthony believes gives them critical mass required to grow the business with the right people.

“Everything is about quality. That’s from the quality of pig we purchase from excellent pig farmer Colin Piercy of Stillington, who has an amazing reputation, to the quality of our team across all four shops.

“Our Old Style Sausages are premium produce taken from a certain cut of Colin’s outdoor bred pork. We leave our bacon to air dry, which is a slow process, but adds to the taste, and we particularly like Colin’s pork because it has a little more fat on than you’ll find on many others’ bacon.

“There has been a trend for pork to get quite lean, but a little bit of fat has been coming back in more recent times and we need that in the sausages to keep that special flavour. We talk with Colin so that he knows just what we are looking for.

“Colin is really keen on keeping the Landrace breed going as it is quite endangered and there is some Duroc in because his pigs are outdoor and are hardy. We buy fourteen whole pigs a week.

Pork butchers are generally renowned for their pork pies and their hams and Appleton’s is no exception. Anthony says the tradition of folk queuing down the street for their pork pies at Christmas or on busy days is still in evidence at Ripon and the other shops too.

“Pork pies and ham are always our two biggest selling items and in the winter we traditionally sell more pork pies. Pies and pastries of all kinds make up 35 per cent of our business and we have between 20-30 pastry lines.

“We pride ourselves on everything being baked fresh in each shop every day. We cook throughout the day.

Anthony says that taking on Appleton’s in Ripon was a no-brainer when it became available and that expansion through similar shops in other local market towns has been the key to their success.

“I’ve been involved in food marketing all my life. My father ran a catering butcher’s supplying restaurants and had a farm shop at Walshford. I studied food marketing at Newcastle University.

“I spent time in Australia and London, where I worked for Pret a Manger. I set up a business making gourmet pies back in Yorkshire. We won awards and supplied high end buyers but at times and when the opportunity came up with Appleton’s we saw it as a great opportunity for us as a family.

“Thomas Appleton set up the business around 150 years ago. It had passed on to Jonas Gaunt and it was with the Gaunt family for several generations until we bought it from Roger Gaunt. We had a business partner at that time and he ended up concentrating on the bakery business and Isabel and I concentrated on Appleton’s, growing it to what it is now.

“Pork butchers’ are a relatively unusual concept today. In France we’d be called a charcuterie, as we sell more cooked produce than a traditional butcher. We’ve found what works for us is a shop in the centre of a market town.

“You need a certain amount of business to be able to employ the right type of people. I used to be mentored by Derrick Potter of The Potter Group and he said you can’t do everything. You need to work on employing good, like-minded people.

“We now have a team of 40 with a manager of each shop, an overall retail manager, head chef, head butcher, technical manager and marketing manager. We also now have a production centre that we opened four years ago in Ripon supplying the shops.

Anthony believes that having four shops gives them the opportunity to remain the local independent shops he feels are integral to communities, and that he and Isabel are determined to carry on the good work Roger undertook successfully for many years at Ripon, across all four shops.

“Roger did a wonderful job. His commitment to quality was paramount and we want that to be the case. We’ve tried to encourage a younger customer base while retaining our more mature customers. Counter service is so important in local market towns. We give our team training and tips on how to make customers feel at ease.

Anthony and Isabel’s shop in Boroughbridge is a full-blown butcher’s shop, including all their pork butcher’s produce.

“It had always been that way,” says Anthony. “We have kept it that way for the town and we supply it with beef from our own herd of Hereford cattle, plus from my uncle Ivan Holmes’ Stabiliser herd.