Danny's Days - 1st December 2025

This week I am embracing the start of December. As you can imagine, I am quite business minded from this point of the year, so I try and get ahead with all things family in November. We put all the decorations up weekend 22^nd November and I’m already ploughing through present ordering and intake. We are blessed with a good-sized family of many ages - some more believing of Father Christmas than others. This all means it's a very busy time organising the Lidgate family Christmas. Thankfully, we're looking good, as I now concentrate on Lidgate Butchers Christmas.

Every year there is some evolution, some natural and some very much planned. This year I think we have concentrated on packaging improvements, improvements to our stuffings,  and we seem to have a considerably stronger team than once experienced. One thing that particularly pleases me, is a couple of bright-eyed young apprentices we have joining the team alongside the well-established Christmas veterans. I think to myself, how recent it was when I was in that position, but as I’m reminded regularly by my eldest teenage child, that was a long time ago.

Another improvement this year has been the investment in new kitchen machinery. This has meant we now have top grade chef equipment in our kitchen to cook all our pies. This is an area of our family business incredibly close to my heart. Before going through extensive butchery trade training at age 17, I spent every Saturday  and every school holiday working (I’m not sure at what speed) in our kitchen. I loved it, nearly as much as I love the butchery side of things. Dad used to say ‘ the meat trade is in the blood ‘and that certainly seems true, but also so is our kitchen and it’s wonderful team.

The very best wishes, 

Danny