Patea Butchery

WARNING - READING THIS WILL MAKE YOU HUNGRY!

ON A CHALKBOARD IN HER OFFICE, INGRID FRENGLEY-VAIPUNA HAS WRITTEN A MANTRA: “THREE THINGS WE SHOULD NEVER RUN OUT OF – SAUSAGES, BACON AND BONES.”

Keeping stocked up is one of the important things she’s learnt since she and husband Paul Vaipuna bought the Patea Butchery in June 2021. They have decided to only sell meat produced in New Zealand and to always opt for high quality.

Buying the business stemmed from another interest. “I really like the space next door to do something with food but the only way to get that was to buy the butchery.”

Ingrid, who has spent her career in education, and Paul Vaipuna, engineering manager at Taranaki Byproducts, have a 2.8-hectare lifestyle block on the edge of town where she gardens and he raises pigs. “We had to buy a butchery to get a cooler for his pigs,” she laughs. While they have some understanding about the world of meat, they aren’t butchers, so employ Mark Parata. He’s the main butcher, and one of Ingrid’s former students, Jack Tamakehu, is the apprentice. Jade Coe runs the shop four days a week during school hours and Ingrid helps. “I do serve in the shop –I’m good at chatting to people.”

Alyssa Gardner, another ex-student from Patea Area School, is the cleaner.

Ingrid says that one of the things she enjoys most about the business is being an employer, especially providing jobs for locals. “Part of my motivation is to give back to Patea,” says Ingrid, sharing that her 14 years in the South Taranaki town is the longest she’s lived anywhere. “It feels like my Turangawaewae.”

Her nomadic ways led her to teach in Tonga. She arrived there as a single mum with two kids, met Paul and left the Pacific island nation with another babe in arms and pregnant. Ingrid and Paul have six adult children, 10 grandchildren and a couple of their kids are vegetarians. “I always thought I’d be a greengrocer not a butcher.”

Her green-fingered ways are flowing into the sausages, which are made on the premises and are seasoned with herbs that she’s growing behind the butchery, they bought off Grant Hurley.

One of Ingrid’s main roles is running the online side of the business and promoting Flying Pig bacon – she has followed the advice of business mentor Ingrid Vercammen, who co-founded Marcel’s Pancakes in Bell Block. “She said ‘focus on one product’. I’ve focused on bacon.”

And that product is flying out of the butchery. “It’s doing well. We can’t keep up with the bacon – we run out the day we have made it.”

Through SurveyMonkey, she asked customers for feedback and was delighted at the response. “People love it,” she says, talking about what brings her joy these days: “People just coming in and saying, ‘that’s the best bacon I have ever eaten in my life’.”

The foodie and home cook offers advice about how best to sizzle the bacon. “I cook in a cold pan, heat it up, do one side and turn it over.” She recommends serving it with scrambled eggs.

Flying Pig bacon is cooked or sold in three places besides the Patea shop –the Good Score Food Store in Hawera, café Fika across the road from the butchery and at The Okato, a restaurant on Surf Highway 45. “It’s working and they love it, so hopefully we can build up each of these little avenues.”

But the former high school English teacher, educational leader and specialist in gifted education, says owning a butchery has forced her to be courageous.

“I did cold calling,” Ingrid grimaces. “For someone who can stand up in front of 30 students and command a room, going in to see a chef about your bacon is quite scary.”

She’s also continuing her own learning journey. First up, she had to learn about the meat industry, be educated on different cuts, broaden her knowledge of marketing and unravel the language of business. She has just finished a PowerUp business course through Venture Taranaki. “I didn’t know there was all that support available. I’ve learnt about the business network sitting behind everything. This is a first time for us – we are very much a start up.”

One that’s got good bones. “People come from far and wide to get pork or bacon bones, especially at this time of year.”

Ingrid and Paul are keen to provide the butchery with top-quality pork with the help of Shane McDonald, who owns Meat at Yours, a mobile abattoir which specialises in stress-free killing. “We are building up our Berkshire herd of pigs. It is considered the wagyu of pork,” says Ingrid, who again emphasises the butchery’s ethos. “We only use New Zealand pork, free range chicken, beef and lamb.”

Contact: 06 273 8634 or pateabutchery@gmail.com

Shop online at pateabutchery.com