When it came to deciding on a profession after leaving school, Lilly Reeves did not expect she would be carving out a career as a butcher.<\/p>\n
Amid sides of meat hanging at ceiling point and the sound of an electric bandsaw cutting through bone, the 17-year-old throws on her striped apron and sharpens her array of knives ahead of another day, learning the art of butchery.<\/p>\n
“I guess I saw Dad doing it and thought it was pretty good,” she said.<\/p>\n
“Learning all the different cuts, slicing \u2026 it’s all pretty good.”<\/p>\n
It is a Friday morning and the butcher shop in downtown Clermont, a small rural and mining town in central Queensland, is abuzz with regulars stocking up for the weekend.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Lilly Reeves is one of two apprentices working at the Clermont shop in central Queensland. (ABC Capricornia: Aaron Kelly)<\/p>\n
It is a stark contrast to an industry that, in many places, is a dying trade.<\/p>\n
“We’ve been going just over two years now \u2026 it’s a good little family operation,” Lilly’s dad Steve said.<\/p>\n
“The butcher shop had closed down out here for nearly 12 months and everyone [in town] missed it, we did.<\/p>\n
“We’d drive past and look in and [check] \u2026 if we’d see a sign if the shop had re-opened, and in the end, we thought we’d have a crack at it.”Country butchers vital<\/p>\n
From meat trays for the footy club’s fundraising raffles to supplying meat to the local pub, butcher shops are the lifeblood of Australia’s smaller regional towns.<\/p>\n
With over two decades of experience as a butcher, Mr Reeves has seen the slow decline of small town butcher shops.<\/p>\n
But his business is going against the grain.<\/p>\n
He has doubled his staff, which includes two apprentices, since the re-opening of what he calls the “old-school butcher shop”.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
It is all hands on deck for the Reeves family, with Lilly, Jasmine and Steve behind the counter. (ABC Capricornia: Aaron Kelly)<\/p>\n
Along with Lilly, Steve’s eldest daughter, Jasmine, 19, and son, Rhys, 16, work at the shop.<\/p>\n
“I think butchering is a dying trade,” Mr Reeves said.<\/p>\n
“It’s hard to find a [qualified] butcher these days. We need to train them up and that’s where my kids come in and a few young local lads are keen to do it too.”<\/p>\n
With a population of about 3,000, keeping local businesses alive is important for the town, located 4 hours north-west of Rockhampton.<\/p>\n
Mr Reeves said there needed to be more support for young apprentices who were facing cost-of-living pressures to keep them in the industry.<\/p>\n
“With the mines they’ve obviously got attractive salaries and stuff like that, but I think in a small business like this, the main thing is keeping a good relationship with the staff,” he said.<\/p>\n
The local butcher shop is the lifeblood of smaller towns. (ABC News: Bec Whetham)<\/p>\n
Rewarding and enjoyable career<\/p>\n
The Australian Meat Industry Council said the “local butcher” played a key part in communities, particularly in remote, regional areas.<\/p>\n
“Just look at the recent natural disasters such as floods and cyclones, often it’s the butcher that is the last shop open in town,” the council’s chief executive Tim Ryan said.<\/p>\n
“Of late, we have also seen an increase in consumer shopping at the local butcher, which has been positive and particularly so.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Tim Ryan is encouraging young people to get into the trade to overcome skilled staff shortages. (Supplied: Australian Meat Industry Council)<\/p>\n
Mr Ryan said there were many factors behind the resurgence of consumers choosing the butcher over supermarkets.<\/p>\n
“They’re far more flexible in [responding to] changing consumer needs and that’s probably the real strength of your local butcher shop,” he said.<\/p>\n
“You really get that tailored service and bits of advice on how to prepare a meal and the products they offer can change from day to day.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The industry says customers are on the increase, with butchers offering a tailored service. (ABC Rural: Daniel Fitzgerald)<\/p>\n
Mr Ryan agreed finding and retaining qualified staff and apprentices was difficult.<\/p>\n
“Across the board, finding people is really challenging in the industry, particularly getting the right skills,” he said.<\/p>\n
Women overcoming stereotypes<\/p>\n
Apprentice butcher Lilly Reeves is determined to keep her trade alive and cut through stereotypes.<\/p>\n
She is part of a mostly female team back in Clermont, and according to Mr Ryan, has joined a growing list of young women getting into the meat industry.<\/p>\n
“We’re actually seeing a broader trend in terms of numbers of females actually wanting to be in the industry and breaking the stigma that butchery is a male trade,” Mr Ryan said.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
More women are getting into the meat industry. (ABC Capricornia: Aaron Kelly)<\/p>\n
“Over time we can change this image in people’s minds and being able to promote young females coming through helps attract more young females in the future.”<\/p>\n
As she handles another slab of meat to slice up, Ms Reeves is bucking a trend in more ways than one.<\/p>\n
Halfway through her apprenticeship, the country teen said she was planning for a future in her chosen trade.<\/p>\n
“We’re thinking of opening up slaughter yards [down the track], so I might give that a crack and see how that goes.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When it came to deciding on a profession after leaving school, Lilly Reeves did not expect she would…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124449,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[87385,64,63,99,87384,87388,2610,87387,87386,14751,61411,34445,73057],"class_list":["post-124448","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-apprenticeships","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-butcher","tag-butcher-shop","tag-cost-of-living","tag-country-town","tag-local-butchers","tag-meat","tag-meat-industry","tag-meat-processing","tag-staff-shortages"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124448","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124448"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124448\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124448"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124448"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124448"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}