The last few years have seen a great deal of change at the Waitrose service counter, with David Redman, Development Director at Dovecote Park, travelling to Waitrose branches across the country to lend his expertise, formed over a lifetime spent in the meat industry, to new and current Waitrose Partners at the service counter.

David trains service counter staff on the boning of products, counter presentation, additional butchery of products and the Introduction of new butchery lines. We are delighted to be working closely with branch Partners in order to ensure that the skilled and careful butchery which Dovecote Park prides itself on is passed along into store and becomes part of the customer service process. 

In addition, certain Waitrose stores have recently introduced specialized dry-age cabinets (pictured) to the service counter. Dovecote Park and Waitrose have led the industry in dry aged beef for over 20 years, with our bespoke dry age facilities and specialized dry age butchery team among our most valued assets. Our dry-aged Hereford beef was awarded a Product Innovation award by Waitrose in 2014, and several of our dry aged products featured prominently in the launch of Waitrose1, the supermarkets highly successful premium range, launched last year.  The Cabinet displays the dry aged product in 3 primal forms of Dry Age Bone in Sirloin, Dry Age Bone in Wing Rib & Dry Age Bone in Rib.

These cabinets have been installed at Twyford, Chandlers Ford and Haywards Heath, with more to be implemented in the coming year. Partners at these stores have had offered bespoke training in Dry Age, boning, preparation, selling and presentation techniques from David. We would like to thank David once again for his tireless work in the field, and look forward to seeing this training develop even further. We have also been delighted to see the success of the dry aged cabinets increasing sales of our dry-aged products and receiving a great level of interest from customers – we are pleased to see this level of success and look forward to introducing more cabinets at other branches!