Paul Hill spoke to Thomsons Foodservice sales director Jackie Watt and managing director Michael Watt about how the opening of an on-site butchery has helped the company achieve growth
Talk us through your customer base and product range
Our family-owned business, established in 1987, is passionate about providing exceptional customer service and value. We offer a broad selection of fresh chilled, frozen, ambient foods and non-food items, with 40% sourced directly from Scottish producers.
In addition, we have our very own on-site butchery. Our skilled team offers an extensive range of high-quality meat products and cuts. All our meat is supplied from respected British and Scottish farmers and meat suppliers.
We supply restaurants, hotels, butchers, cafés, holiday parks and more in Dumfries and Galloway, South Ayrshire, South Lanarkshire, the Scottish Borders and north-west England.
What gives your business its USP?
Thomsons always strives to be first for quality and service. We achieve this by always putting our customers first and going the extra mile. We are continually improving and evolving to ensure we provide our customers with the best experience. For example, we only sold packaged meats until 2021. After many requests from customers and seeing a gap in the market, we decided to invest in a butchery. This has been very beneficial for our customers and enables us to offer a more extensive range.
Additionally, we often order bespoke items for certain customers struggling to find them elsewhere. With a customer satisfaction rate of 97% and an ongoing five-star rating on Google across all reviews, we strongly believe we achieve our mission.
While we have grown and evolved over the years, our focus for keeping quality and service at the forefront has remained the same, resulting in customers being as happy with the service and goods we provide as they have been for many years.
Any issues that arise – whether quality problems, delivery issues or anything else – are all dealt with in a timely and effective manner.
We are a member of The Wholesale Group, which is the largest foodservice buying group and second-largest retail buying group in the UK. This gives us the buying power of a large national business and means better pricing and variety for customers while providing a quality local service.
What are your growth plans?
The Wholesale Group has more than 50 years’ experience within the wholesale sector. This allows us to tap in to a wealth of information and gives us access to excellent support. We are excited to keep working closely with The Wholesale Group team to see all the opportunities that come along to help us continue to grow.
This will also involve supporting the own-brand range of products, which are excellent quality at keen prices.
We have started incorporating AI into our business. This will bring huge benefits in terms of aiding the ordering process, helping to identify buying trends and much more.
What products do you want to sell in greater numbers?
Our on-site butchery is a massive asset to our business and has proved very popular
with our customers. It gives us the opportunity to meet customer demand by offering a more extensive range of high-quality meat products, including smaller joints, cut steaks, burgers, lorne, and our own mince and stew. We are very keen to keep promoting this and see it continue to grow.
Additionally, as a member of The Wholesale Group, we are keen to support the quality-approved suppliers, and as a result, continue to increase the products we stock across our ambient, chilled, frozen and non-food range. We actively encourage our customers to advise of any new product lines they require. This has helped to grow our product range organically, retain customers and attract new ones.
What is the biggest challenge the business faces?
All wholesalers will be aware of the many challenges facing the currently sector. In particular, the cost of employing staff, fuel costs, energy prices and the ever-increasing price of products.
These costs have to be absorbed by businesses and it is more important than ever to ensure appropriate margins are applied when pricing for our customers.
What has the company done to improve its environmental footprint?
Sustainability and reducing plastic are high on our agenda, and we have taken many practical steps to remove plastic and reduce food wastage throughout our business.
We source from eco-conscious Scottish brands such as Vegware, and only offer our customers an ever-growing selection of plant-based packaging products.
Our team is trained to use reusable baskets and containers to make up orders and transport goods.
We are also embracing digital marketing, which is greatly reducing our paper use, and our online ordering app also massively helps with this.
Over an eight-month period, we added 134 new users to our app. Additionally, as we purchase a significant amount of local and Scottish produce, we are able to collect or have them delivered, thereby reducing food miles. It is worth noting that all of our cardboard is recycled and taken off site by a local company.
We are hoping to install solar panels on our warehouse roof in the near future and are seeking advice on this.
