Episode 02: Kathryn Meadows- Head of Nicholson’s Butchers
I have known Kathryn (known to me as Kat) for nearly 15 years. I met Kat at the very beginning of her career as she was completing a ski season with my sister in Val D’Isere in the French Alpes. Since then I have been vaguely aware of Kat’s journey to head up the family business, Nicholson’s Butchers in Whitley Bay, but was really interested to find out more detail and what decisions she had made along the way to finally get her to take the big step into her father’s shoes.
Kat had worked in the family butcher’s during holidays and at weekends and had always had a passion for food so she knew that she wanted to study this at school and then continue this onto university level. What was interesting for me was that she thought she wanted to be part of the corporate ‘Rat Race’ when she left university and had high hopes of working for one of the big 4 food retailers at some point in her career. Even though she achieved this objective, she came to the conclusion that using what she had learned in the corporate world would be really useful if she went to work for the family's business.
Kat followed quite a linear path in the food industry and it started with a university placement. Kat really enjoyed this placement and it set the scene for her career. In this placement, she realised what she did and didn’t like from an employment. This meant that when she started her first job after university (and a gap year or 2) she knew that she was in the wrong place even though it was heralded as one of the best places to work in her industry.
After a few years in the corporate world working for suppliers and retailers in NPD roles, it was at a family even with her father, after a few red wines, that she made the decision to go and work with her father to take over the family business.
In the episode, we discuss what this was like to go and step into her father’s shoes and work with a new team that had know her as the boss’s daughter. Kat takes us on a journey through the past 10 years of how she onboarded staff, built a team and got the business ready for the future. Kat talks about how she navigated the pandemic and how business boomed due to their constant supply of meat from local suppliers and farmers.
Kat also didn’t get much advice or direction from careers advisers at school but handily she knew she wanted to work in food, she recommends researching for yourself but also getting work experience to test drive potential careers to find out what you want to do.
Kat is a big fan of the industry’s apprenticeship schemes available and has supplied links to them here:
Butcher Apprenticeship Level 2
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