09 May 2011, 15:35 PM
  • Steve Croot, of Croots Farm Shop in Derbyshire, gives customers a baa-gain with the launch of a new mutton sausage

For ages now, I’ve been planning to create a special Derbyshire sausage to add to our popular selection, but couldn’t decide what flavour to go for. We have dozens in our repertoire now and I was keen for something that was going to be distinct. But after hearing about how mutton is undergoing a bit of a revival it suddenly dawned on me that we should go for a mutton sausage. After all, Derbyshire is known for its sheep!

So this month our head butcher Rob developed a delicious mutton sausage with herbs and lemon, and we launched it with a ‘25% off all sausages’ celebration which went down really well. The fantastic BBQ weather over Easter was a massive help with our promotion and I reckon we increased sausage sales by about 40%.

It went so well that I followed it up the following week with a 25% off all steak. There’s no doubt that offers are a big draw for customers. To spread the word we alerted our existing customers by email about our deals. We also ran another social media advertising campaign to promote the offers, and it seems to have been very successful, as there were a lot of new faces in the shop.

We’re marking the third birthday of Croots in June with a 50-mile sponsored walk by staff to raise money for our adopted charity, Treats, which supports local children in need. The idea is that on June 15th the staff will walk up and down our drive, which is roughly quarter of a mile each way, doing a mile at a time. We’re adding a collection bottle for donations on the counter and by promoting our effort early we hope that customers really get behind us and help us raise lots of money.