We have been established for over a century

Our Family Butchers has been in operation for over a century.

ARCHIE DENNIS (Philip Dennis’s Father), had a butcher’s shop in Braunton since long before the First World War. He was known for his excellent sausages and took pride in providing the best meat he could. In fact, he used to buy animals in before they were due for slaughter and graze them for a few weeks to ensure they were of the best quality. Three of Archie’s brothers were butchers, and their uncle, Sidney, had a shop in Morthoe. The need to sell good food must be in the genes!

PHILIP DENNIS, Archie’s son worked in Archie’s shop until World War Two. When he returned home in 1946 he started his own farming business. Over time he produced pork, turkeys and hens’ eggs, and built up a successful business delivering to hotels in Woolacombe. Philip was quite innovative in his approach and was always keen to produce a quality product. He produced his pigs using what was known as the ‘Danish method’ which was new to the South West, and turkeys were relatively unknown in this country when he first started to rear them. He did well because local businesses had never had a regular, local supply of such a good product. This is still vital to our customers today , giving our customers what they want has been very important over the years.

JOHN DENNIS, Philip’s son officially joined his father in business In 1977 . Of course, he had been involved before then, hand-plucking turkeys during the Christmas rush and helping with deliveries from a young age. When John joined the business it was just him and his Dad, in the early eighties they employed their first member of staff to help and he is still a part of the team working with us today! John spotted that customers had a growing need for frozen food, which was quite new then. The company started supplying it to customers and thankfully, it proved very popular, so much so that by the mid-eighties we’d outgrown our premises and moved to much larger ones... We’ve expanded a few more times since!

PETER DENNIS, John’s youngest son became a fourth-generation director in 2017. He works alongside Managing Director Steven Carr running the business day to day. Prior to joining the family business he was a ran a consultancy in London. He has brought his expertise in management systems and e-commerce helping Philip Dennis to be even more efficient . He has a keen interest in green energy and has been working hard to reduce Philip Dennis’ carbon footprint. Thanks to Peter’s work in this area we now source 100% renewable energy. The combined CO2 saving power of both our solar panels and wind turbine over a 20-year lifetime is the equivalent of the planting of over 100,000 trees!