You don’t have to be in the company of Maureen and David Lush for long to realise why they’ve had such longevity on the high street. The elderly and supremely kind couple have invited me into their quaint garden in the centre of Penarth which is bursting with colour, and I’m immediately treated to a coffee and cake.
The closure of David Lush comes after 50 years in which the family has made a name for themselves across south Wales. In an interview with WalesOnline, David, his wife Maureen and one of their sons Marcus spoke about all the reasons why they were calling it a day - including the huge pressures facing small businesses.
“It’s been difficult to accept, but it’s the right time,” Maureen admits, getting a little emotional. She is convinced that kindness and a good product is enough to make a small business work for years on end, but she doesn’t envy those starting out in an era where small businesses face more obstacles than ever - and perhaps none more so than the traditional butcher.
Maureen, now 77 and recovering from open heart surgery which effectively ended her time with the business late last year, tells me a story which encapsulates her family’s approach to their life. It’s one of her favourite memories.
“One Christmas a lady just up the road rang at 8pm on Christmas Eve,” she began, giggling continuously as she recalled the tale. “She was quite elderly. She said: ‘Mrs Lush, you haven’t brought me my Christmas meat dear. I ordered a turkey leg and it hasn’t arrived.’ ‘Oh dear’, I said. And I remember these ladies very well - they had an almost Victorian style about them. I said: ‘Look, I don’t know where my husband and the boys are, I think they’ve gone off to have a drink. So I’ll cut off a leg from my turkey and I’ll bring it up to you.’ ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I couldn’t possibly allow that.’ But I just couldn’t rest if she didn’t get this leg she’d asked for.
“It’s little things like that which stay with me. I always said to the boys, while bringing them up in the shop: ‘You always treat everyone the same - whether they want two sausages or a whole fillet.’
“The staff have been so loyal to us, as have the customers. We’ve made great friends with many of them over the years. I think people appreciated us.”
David, now 79, still spent a lot of time in the shop a stone’s throw from his home until they finally sold it last month, but packed it in to care for Maureen. “She needed my support and I need to be here for her now,” he said. “It’s not just that - I ran out of energy. It’s a tough industry now. I’d still be doing it if I was younger.”
“It’s all my fault,” Maureen laughed, “but then again - it was my fault we started the business in 1975.”
Maureen, then a nurse in Cardiff, met David at a bar at the town’s esplanade where they now spend many an afternoon together, in the sixties. David, a butcher’s boy since he was 15, went on to work at sea like his father, qualifying through the navy’s cooking school and becoming chief cook - which he did for a decade.
“I didn’t see the point of working at sea and being married,” David recalled. “I’d watched my father do it and while he and my mother stayed together, it was all ups and downs.”
“I didn’t want him to be at sea either,” Maureen said. “I walked into the butcher at the Washington Buildings [in Penarth town centre] one day and told the butcher, Ian Large, that he had been looking a bit down in the mouth.
“He told me he wanted to sell up and build homes instead. So I told him to come down to the house and speak with David about taking on the business. It was spur of the moment really. When it actually happened I thought: ‘Oh my God - I know nothing about cutting meat.’ But David has taught me well.
“I only joined for 18 months and then I was going to go back to nursing. But I’ve been involved ever since. I did everything really, other than cutting sausages. They did try and get me to do it but I couldn’t link them and we’d end up with one giant sausage - yards of the stuff.”
“I would never have thought it would have lasted as it did,” David laughed, recalling the day he borrowed £3,000 from the bank to take on the lease. “I told Ian I didn’t know a great deal about it and so he agreed to stay with me for a year and we built it up from there.
“Honestly it was non-stop from the beginning. I was lucky I suppose that meat was so in demand. In the first week we took more than £800 - a lot then.
“It carried on for the six years that we were there, and then we went to Glebe Street to take on the bigger building and expand. I bought it for £45,000.”
It wasn’t all rosy though, Maureen says. “In our second summer in 1976 we had a heatwave - of course no-one had barbecues back then and so no-one was buying. Because the building was so small I was making pasties and scotch eggs at home and running these trays up to David to sell them.
“I wondered how we were going to survive because we’d put everything on the line for the shop. But we adapted. Things haven’t changed much, you still have to adapt.”
By the time they moved to the Glebe Street building in 1981 there were 14 butchers in Penarth. “Of course that would be unheard of now,” David said. “But there was such an appetite for meat and there weren’t so many restaurants.”
Marcus remembered: “Every shop was an independent business. There were delis, fishmongers, greengrocers, butchers, veg shops, bakers - and there was also a huge Woolworths which the kids loved.
“If you went out for food it was once in a blue moon because it was expensive. Now you can go to the pub and eat quite cheaply. That’s affected independent businesses and appetite for good produce.”
Marcus laid bare the difficulties currently facing a typical high street butcher. While he’s sad the town centre butcher - now a pantry - will no longer carry the family name, he admits there is a sense of relief he is no longer “waking up in the middle of the night”.
“It was getting really tough towards the end,” he explained. “We had trouble getting staff all the time. I think it’s just too easy for people to stay at home now.
“I’d go to the job centre and call recruitment agencies offering jobs, and people wouldn’t even turn up to the interviews. We were posting on social media about job vacancies and I could see it had reached more than 5,000 people, and yet we might have a couple of responses - usually asking if we would pay them in cash or if they could only do 16 hours a week.
“Then the pandemic came along and people were paid to stay at home and that was it then, they didn't want to come and work on the high street.”
As costs have risen across the board they eventually had no choice but to increase their prices. “Meat has gone up like everything else - probably the highest it’s ever been,” Marcus added.
“In January you could get a large free range chicken for £10, but now it’s double that. That’s partly down to what’s going on in Ukraine and Russia, which produces almost 40% of grain.
“If you’re in the meat business you’re relying on fuel and that has gone up. We were relying on European workers on £15 an hour to deliver the meat, but many of them have returned to their home countries and have been replaced by British drivers who want £25 an hour. That all comes back to the retailer and then the customer.
“In March we had to start putting prices up. We should have done it a long time before but we felt people had enough to worry about around Christmas.
“Sometimes customers understood - especially the loyal ones. Sometimes we got negative comments about it. We’d sometimes get: ‘Jesus Christ, 20 quid for a chicken?’ I think most people understood why.
“We had a huge German oven we relied on that sometimes would need a part from Europe, and it’d take 12 weeks due to delays. It all adds up.”
They've had many messages of goodwill from people in the town and across Britain when they announced their decision. “I think people were shocked,” Maureen said. “But unfortunately it is what it is, we’re getting older and it’s not the same as it was. The boys tried their best.
“It has been emotional. I struggle to speak about it. It’s the customers that make me emotional, thinking about them over the years.
“They have become great friends. I’ve known many of them since they were babies and then they came in to see us with their own babies. That’s what I’ll miss the most.
“I’ll miss giving recipes to the youngsters - young parents to help them with their cooking, and they came in each week for new tips. It’s been more than just selling meat. I’d like to think we’ve helped people in their lives.”
In unprecedented times for the high street, is it possible to mirror their longevity? “I think it is,” David said. “Things change. We’ve had our troubles. Foot and mouth and swine flu were bad ones for the industry. Now we’ve got all of this going on with the grain etc and you have to try and absorb some cost because you can’t price yourselves out. You do have to adapt and get by.
“I don’t think there is a secret - it’s about producing quality every day. You can’t cut corners.
“All the wholesalers knew me - they knew if they gave me rubbish they’d have it straight back. You need quality produce and the ability to give people what they want, and as long as you can do that then people will travel to see you.
“We became a destination really. A lot of our loyal customers weren’t Penarth people. I’ve never advertised in my life, it was all through word of mouth.”
“It couldn’t have been done without the family unit, though,” Marcus said. “If we weren’t so invested it wouldn’t have been able to last.” You can stay updated with the best places for food and drink in Wales by signing up to our food and drink newsletter here.
Marcus is now working at Oriel Jones in Canton while Shaun is at Wally’s Deli in Cardiff city centre. While it was a wrench to say goodbye to a venture which has been a constant in their lives, Marcus is sure his family have made the right decision.
“It’s a real shame it isn’t in the family name anymore, of course - but maybe in hindsight it has been for the best,” he said. “It is a rough time for retail. Where I’m working now I’m told by others how happy I seem to be while doing things some don’t want to do. I am happy, just going in and doing my best and then coming home, and I’m no longer worrying about things.”
What will David and Maureen do now they have so much time on their hands? “I’m going down the beach for a walk,” David says with delightful certainty, not looking too far ahead.
“We’re going to enjoy life,” Maureen added. “We’re going to travel around Britain and see more of Wales, Scotland and go over to Ireland too. I think we’ve probably deserved that.”
