A Chat with: Littlewoods
“Most people don’t know my surname’s not actually Littlewoods”
Such is Marcus’ presence that he’s become synonymous with the butcher’s shop his family inherited 25 years ago, the last 14 of which he’s been in charge. He is Littlewoods. Isn’t he?!
Marcus would argue otherwise, I’m sure—during the course of our nearly two-hour long chat he’s frequently self-deprecating, repeatedly meeting compliments with ‘I’m just a guy making sausages’. He enthuses about the seven-person strong team under his leadership, as well as his wife Elise, who does the shop accounts (which she somehow fits in alongside her own busy and successful career in politics). He does his very best to downplay his role in turning this unassuming butcher's in suburban Heaton Chapel into the most respected in town. I’m not convinced.
The first time I met Marcus, we spent about an hour outside the Eat Well MCR office with Mary-Ellen Mctague talking about local elections. Our chat at Littlewoods began with Brexit (“let’s start with the meaty stuff”), and moved through Russia’s war on Ukraine, farming, French food culture and of course, both the history and future of meat consumption. He describes himself as an introvert but is, clearly, actively engaged in the world around him. It’s Marcus’ personal politics that are, I would argue, inseparable from the success and good-standing of Littlewoods, infused as they are into every aspect of the business.
And what food is more political right now than meat?! That is, political in the sense of both the classic definition—relating to collective decision-making about how we live our lives and share resources—as well as our contemporary associations with the term as something that is hotly debated, divisive, polarising. What we choose to eat (assuming the privilege of choice), is a decision that is both deeply personal and inescapably societal. As such, conversation around it can be highly emotionally charged, no more so than when we’re talking about it running out. Meat consumption in particular has become a lightning rod for climate crisis anxiety—just the very act of being a butcher, in this context, becomes political.
This is relatively new ground for an ancient craft, and discourse around food was certainly less contentious when Marcus entered the trade. It also, back then, wasn’t an active choice for him (“being a butcher's son is a bit like being a farmer's son. You’re kind of bred into it, it’s inevitable”). But sticking at it, and taking the shop in the direction it’s gone in, has been a conscious decision from him. Littlewoods’ reputation for locally sourced, whole animal butchery began with Marcus, way before it was on-trend:
“There was a period when small butchers were trying to copy what supermarkets were doing and I decided nah, I’m not gonna do that. Twenty years ago I said, if it’s not economically viable doing whole carcass, then I'm not interested. It seems to be working out…”
It was a brave business move, but prioritising product over profit has, ironically, paid off. The shop is going strong despite an ever-turbulent economic climate (they’re even looking to expand), and just as importantly, Marcus’ determination to work in a way that aligns with his principles has cemented him as a key player in the local food industry, much-respected by chefs who rely on both his product and knowledge. As the middleman between farmers and chefs (and the public), his work is a crucial part of the ongoing conversation about what we should be eating and how we should be going about producing it.
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“Good quality, nutrient-dense food is more important than ever. Compared to the meat most people eat, ours is nothing like it.”
Though around 70% of the UK is farmland, most people are far-removed from the reality of agricultural life. We grow up with quaint images of happy cows and sheep in bucolic countryside, but somehow by adulthood it’s an occupation that feels hidden in plain sight. How many of us have visited a working farm, or spoken to a farmer about their issues and motivations? Given that they are responsible for what we eat, and are very much at the forefront of efforts to future-proof our food supply, there is dangerously little understanding about what they’re actually doing.
A void of information so often leads to negative speculation. Marcus believes that the public wrongly sees farmers as ‘just putting phosphates on the ground and everything you do is bad and it's polluting’, where the reality is that farming is ‘really tough, your costs are really hard, and the government makes it more difficult at times. There’s a lot of misinformation around it.’ Farming is a blanket term that is applied to such a broad spectrum of activity, from the ‘factory farms’ (over 1,000 in the UK) at one end, to small-scale farmers at the other, who act as custodians to the land and work in accordance with holistic and regenerative principles.
Marcus is a big advocate for the latter, and is selective about who he works with, which includes Jane Oglesby in Cheshire, the Langleys in Bunbury, David Charlsworth in North Yorkshire, ‘a David over in the Wirral, Brian in Lancashire and a Jane in Colwyn Bay’.The first names suggest a level of familiarity that feels rare these days. In every sense, Marcus is bringing them closer to us, bridging the gap between what we eat and the people who provide it.
This isn’t just about the superior taste of the product. His is an approach that’s looking towards the future, actively engaged with the big questions on our minds, such as: ‘How do we feed everyone? How do we protect natural resources? How much should it cost?’. Reluctantly, we dip our toes into veganism—I want to get his riposte to the argument that a plant-based diet is the only sustainable option for the future.
“If you’re a vegan because you don’t agree with killing animals, well then we’re never gonna agree. If you’re a vegan for environmental reasons I think you’ve really got to challenge that. As I understand it, that's just as detrimental to the environment as the really large global meat producers are.”
A supporter of regenerative farming methods, Marcus believes that eating a little bit of meat, ‘as long as it’s been farmed and reared properly’, is better for the environment, because ‘if you're not using these large animals, if they’re not passing over the pasture, you’re not going to be able to grow things you want to grow without then just reverting back to adding more fertiliser.’ Acknowledging the high price of meat produced in this way (‘the cost is really high for retail. Sometimes even we think it’s expensive’), Marcus points out that if your food is cheap, it’s because someone or something has been exploited further down the line:
“Aldi might have some great wagyu steaks on there dead cheap and they taste great. But there’s a cost to it - with cheap food you’ve already paid the price.”
He wants meat to be considered a luxury that we enjoy sparingly: “Most people could reduce their meat consumption by 50%, but go somewhere small and local for it. Whether you go direct to a farm shop or whether you come to us or whether you go to a farm that sells it, do that. And accept that it is a luxury, but just eat less.” This is a mindset they encourage in their retail customers (‘buy a sharing steak, don’t think you’ve got to do this British thing of a big steak each’), alongside venturing to lesser-known cuts, which keeps costs down and reduces waste. It’s what he wants to see more of in restaurants too.
“You’re seeing a lot of restaurants making amazing dishes without any meat. There could be 20 items on the menu but there might only be three which have meat in them, and I think that’s really good.”
Again, bold statements from a business that’s 55% wholesale. He admits to being ‘quite picky’ about who he supplies, too. Most are local independents that share his vision. He regularly does butchery demos in restaurants, teaching chefs how to break down an animal, discussing how to make the most of it and which cuts will work in which dishes. Economically, encouraging chefs to work in this way gives him the ability to purchase more whole carcasses from smaller farms and pay them a better price. On an interpersonal level, he cites the relationships he’s developing as his favourite part of the job:
“I really like working with the chefs. It's nice showing them how to do it. It’s really interesting to pass those skills on; to take that knowledge to that extra level and see what they do with it, with their creativity.
And then we have restaurants taking a whole carcass from somebody like Jane Oglesby. That whole cycle is really good—how the whole system kind of comes together and how you are an integral part of that food system.”
He talks of the restaurants they supply as a ‘broader family we’re connected to’, which makes it less surprising when he tells me he frequently refuses to work with some (“We spend a lot of time at the minute knocking people back. There’s a few people who I think, ‘why would I want to work with you, you’re not what we’re about?’”). This is ballsy and I love it—we’re endlessly talking about problematic behaviour but few will (or are in a position to) actually walk the walk. It shows integrity, and the commitment to principles you see elsewhere in the business (and not a small amount of Northern no-nonsense attitude).
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“I started working when I was 11. Absolutely hated it.”
I can’t think of anyone who’s made butchery look as visually appealing as Marcus has. It’s not typically a glamorous trade, but—whether intentionally or not, and I suspect the latter—his photos have no doubt helped to build the Littlewoods ‘brand’. Simple and tasteful (incredibly, all taken on his phone), they make the product palatable and accessible for a social media audience. It belies the grit and hard graft behind the scenes.
Marcus describes butchery, tellingly, as ‘like a black hole. You’re gonna be sucked in, there's no way out of it.’ As a child, he was up at 4.30am to work before school, then went back to the shop in the evenings. He worked Saturdays, summer holidays, Christmas and New Year and, understandably, describes it as ‘absolute misery’. But somewhere along the way, he turned a corner. He still starts at 5.30am most days, but perhaps less reluctantly: “a job that I hated started to kind of like… get into my bones a bit. It definitely gets into your blood.” There’s nostalgia there, too, for a trade passed down from generation to generation:
“It’s always been a butcher’s - I love that. Someone’s always been stood at that corner where Robbie stands, doing what he’s doing.”
It’s easy to over-romanticise the ‘artisan craftsman’, but there is something special, and rare, about a skill being passed down, built upon and nurtured in this way. And despite the early trauma, Marcus speaks with great love and respect for the craft he’s been born into and the higgledy-piggledy old Victorian terrace that houses all this history (“man and boy have been here since I was 11. There’s a pleasure in a craft”).
But it’s a fragile existence. He acknowledges it’s ‘been really hard’ and he doesn’t ‘know how other places are doing it’, with the business hit by competition from supermarkets, soaring high costs and of course, most recently, Brexit. Prices have ‘skyrocketed’ since, increasing 30% (equivalent to eight years’ price increases) in a month. He’s adamant he can’t pass those costs on to restaurants already struggling because of Covid and staff shortages. So far, the business has been able to absorb them, and they’re able to ‘plod on and keep doing what we’re doing’. He’s realistic that change isn’t likely to come soon:
“When it comes to policy and politics, anybody who offers you a simple solution is either a liar or being disingenuous at best.”
Marcus also touches on the cultural impact of Brexit, of family members in France who no longer feel they are wanted here. One cousin is a baker and patissier (much sought-after skills) and was rejected for a visa, with no reason given. Meanwhile the hospitality industry limps on, short-staffed.
He’s thankful to have a strong team working for him (“I think they’re happy… you can hear them now having a laugh”). Any extra revenue the business makes will go back into their wages—he wants them to earn as much as a plumber or electrician, and he’s been doing 2-3 wage increases a year since he took over to try to get them there. He’s also ‘big on autonomy and developing their skills’, giving them the freedom to develop products themselves and thrive in a flat hierarchy where ‘no one is in charge, they work as a team’. He has huge respect for everyone from his wife (‘it’s incredible what she can do’), to old-timer Robbie, (‘I don't think he has any idea of his skills. Real craftsman that one’), right down to the newest recruits (‘the person with the hardest job is the youngest person’). It’s not hard to see how they’ve weathered the loss of skilled labour that’s hit so drastically elsewhere in the trade.
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“There’s definitely some turbulent times ahead. But it’s easy to change things just by simple choices.”
I recently had a chat with a friend about food trends, and how the places we most love are those forging ahead with what they believe to be right, regardless of what everyone else is doing. It creates a sense of integrity and authenticity that customers can believe in, year after year. I think that’s what’s happening with Littlewoods.
Of course, the meat tastes better. The trajectory of the company has also tied in nicely with increased public awareness about food provenance and animal welfare. But it would be cynical to say that’s all it’s about. There’s always been a philosophy behind what they’re doing here. Supporting small-scale, pasture-led farmers and independent restaurants, celebrating the whole animal, appreciating craft and educating consumers, chefs and staff alike—this is an approach that sees the business as part of the community, going against the post-Thatcher ‘every man for himself’ ideology that still pervades in so many areas of life.
Discussing how closely linked food and politics are, and the state of the food system, Marcus laments: “It’s definitely all wrong at the minute. There’s some positives, but it’s not policy getting it there, it's not investment, it’s individuals.” Here is one such individual, who ‘never intended to be a butcher’ but has nevertheless become something of a catalyst for change—and proof that the little everyday choices we make add up to something big and meaningful.
