A CHAMPIONSHIP-winning family butchers is celebrating 70 years of selling top-quality meat to the people of Hanley Swan - but staff are too busy to celebrate!
Pauline Phipps, grand-daughter of Robert Allen Phipps, who established the business in 1932, said she had too much on her plate to organise a celebration to mark the occasion.
"Business is very good at the moment," said Ms Phipps, who put its continuing success down to the way it treated meat and the wide variety of products on offer.
"We're well known for pies and a lot of speciality pies and sausages, and everything's home-made,'' she said.
"People will come in and see we've got such a big variety of home-made products that they always go home with something!"
She added that the acquisition of another large, walk-in fridge in 2000 had allowed the business to hang its beef for the optimum period of up to four weeks, which she said was essential to the production of top-quality steaks and burgers.
This year's Three Counties Show saw the business win championship titles for its home-made beefburgers and meat pies. In January, it received three platinum awards at a Birmingham show and home-made pork pie, Henley Sage, won "overall champion".
Over the past three years the shop has won 25 gold awards in regional competitions run by the Meat and Livestock Commission, and has just been granted an EC licence to sell pastry products wholesale.
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