Many small communities like Canowindra in New South Wales once had several butcher shops. But when the last one was put up for sale, two friends – a farmer and a butcher – decided to buy it.
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00:00It's early morning on the main street of Conoundra in central west New South Wales.
00:11While most people are asleep, Max Benno is heading into work.
00:16And there's no other place he'd rather be.
00:20The butcher shop is my happy place.
00:23It truly is.
00:24And it makes it so much easier when you've got good meat to sell.
00:29Max is in early to prepare meat to sell that day.
00:33It's funny being a butcher.
00:35You have some people that come in and they think the meat's sliced.
00:39The sausages are already made.
00:41The joy that we have is we're a whole carcass butchery.
00:44So any product that you do want we can get for you because we do the whole carcass.
00:48The downside of that is we've got to break a lot of carcasses and there's a lot of work
00:52involved.
00:53But depending on the day there's been 2am, 3am, 4am starts.
01:01He moved to Conoundra two years ago after he and Wal Stranger met while working as meat
01:07traders in Sydney.
01:09They became good friends and began talking about ways of selling meat directly to the
01:14consumer and started looking around for opportunities.
01:19Then they heard a butcher shop was up for sale.
01:22In Wal's hometown of Conoundra where he grew up on a sheep farm.
01:26You know after meeting Max we thought it was quite a unique combo we had.
01:31The fact that I was quite across the producer side of things and Max is a fully qualified
01:37butcher with over 20 years of experience.
01:39So we thought well why don't we put that together and then with the little bit of experience
01:44that we've gotten on the distribution side and then throw online into that.
01:50We just thought we could really integrate the butcher shop and our Minaroo lamb and
01:56put it on the plates of our customers, direct from business to customer.
02:00Keeping that old fashioned, authentic, face to face customer experience alive is what
02:05Max and Wal always wanted.
02:08So when they became the new owners of the last remaining butcher shop in Conoundra they
02:12had to quickly learn how to run a business.
02:15And they've been embraced by the local community.
02:19We're very lucky that Max and Wal started the butcher shop in Conoundra.
02:23With that they've started to work on Saturday afternoons and work on Sundays which has seen
02:29a large increase in people travelling to Conoundra to have a cup of coffee and to buy some meat.