Over the past seven years, since he co-founded the Yorkshire-based online butcher Farmison & Co, John Pallagi has eaten in a lot of top-of-the-range steakhouses around the world, in search of new ideas for his virtual meat counter. One such experience last January in Huntington Beach, California, led to the creation of Farmison’s steak & bone marrow burgers, which later topped a survey of best home-cook burgers in the Times. (Having tried them myself, I can report that the verdict – “insanely flavoursome” – is pretty accurate.) Much as he admired what was going on in New York and Buenos Aires, however, Pallagi felt that there was just as much to get excited about in the UK, if only we made a bigger fuss about it.
“We’ve got some real gems in this country,” he says, “but we just don’t know how good we are. British meat doesn’t have the international reputation it deserves.”
With Farmison & Co, Pallagi is looking to correct that oversight. He set up the company in 2011 with his business partner Lee Simmonds after nearly a decade of running brasseries across the north of England. “The inspiration came out of talking to people at tables and being asked, ‘Where can I get that great goose breast from?’ or ‘Where can I find that steak?’ We started listing the breed and farm on the menu and I could see that people were intrigued.”
When the brasseries succumbed to the financial crash, Pallagi and Simmonds switched to retail and ramped up the detail. As well as imposing rigorous ethical standards on their farmers, Farmison lavishes customers with information about provenance, breed, cut and ageing – practically everything but the animal’s name and star sign. It’s proving remarkably successful. “In terms of turnover, we will do about £6m this year compared to £3.7m in 2017,” says Pallagi proudly.
To cope with demand – customer numbers are doubling year on year – Farmison has just moved to a shiny new 50,000-square-foot premises in Ripon, North Yorkshire, with a butchery academy, maturation rooms and a vast reference library of books about meat and butchery. “Publications from all over the world,” says Pallagi. The Farmison team is growing too, from 25 employees last year to 40 now and an expected 65 next year.
It’s all because British meat-eaters are getting better informed and seeking out higher quality produce, says Pallagi. He compares it to wine. “Twenty-five years ago, people just wanted red or white,” he says. “Now we’re all experts: we know the grape, the vintage, the country, the area. The high end of the meat market is going the same way.” Pallagi can already see this happening at Farmison, where demand for heritage breeds and less obvious cuts of meat is increasing. “We’re definitely not a fillet steak site,” he says.
