Butcher back in Torquay

Hamish Heard
Torquay meat lovers will have a new flavour to sink their teeth into when gourmet butcher chain Farm Foods opens an outlet in the town.
The store will occupy the former site of Torquay Meats after it closed last month following a fire that left the town without a butcher shop.
The new store will be the fourth Farm Foods outlet for Geelong’s Kerr family since it launched a first shop in Birregurra in 2004.
Nicholas Kerr, who will run the shop with brothers Simon and Richard, predicted locals would savour the store’s combination of specialty cuts of meat, wine, cheese and condiments.
“We do specialise in a traditional style of butchering but anyone who’s been into our other stores will know they’re far from traditional in terms of what we offer,” Mr Kerr said.
The company carried out most of the butchering for its Birregurra, Queenscliff and Hamilton stores at a centralised boning room in Geelong.
“It means our retail floor space at the Torquay shop can be nearly three times the size of the butcher shop that was there,” Mr Kerr said.
“We produce most of the beef ourselves, so we can control the flavour of the meat through breeding and feed regimes we put them all on grain for 150 days – and we also have a policy that we can’t sell steaks until they’ve aged for at least two weeks to guarantee tenderness,” Mr Kerr said.
Farm Foods also sold gourmet sausages to more than 300 supermarkets throughout Australia, he said.
Torquay real estate agent Brian Hayden, who leased the Gilbert Street shopfront to Farm Foods, was confident the new butcher would would thrive in the town.
“Hayden Real Estate searched high and low for a quality replacement for Bob (Huggard) the butcher and we’re delighted we could encourage the Kerr family to take it on,” Mr Hayden said.
The Kerr family was widely respected in Victoria’s beef and meat industries, he said.
“We have a very strong involvement in the beef industry, that’s why I was really happy when the Kerrs said ‘We’ll have a crack at this’.”