Inverurie’s Lisa Finnigan has been cutting it in the butchery world by winning a prestigious industry award.
Lisa, 21, who is shop manager for Davidsons Specialist Butchers’ busy Inverurie store, was recently named Young Scottish Butcher of the Year at the 2015 Meat Skills Scotland competition held by the Scottish Federation of Meat Traders Association (SFMTA) in Perth.
Her journey to lifting the title saw her beat off stiff competition in the contest to showcase her butchery skills using a range of pork, lamb and beef joints to create no less than 54 individual products.
Lisa is undoubtedly helping to highlight the excellent opportunities for women which exist in the industry – but to both her and her employer, ability is always more important than gender.
With a strong family background in the food industry and spurred on by her Saturday job at a local bakery shop, Lisa originally joined the Davidsons team in the bakery department.
There, she swiftly completed her in-house and industry-led training before taking charge of the section and then setting her sights on a move into the butchery department.
It was not long before Lisa was making her mark there too, and her drive saw her achieve her butchery qualifications, including a diploma, in half the normal time to become the only female butcher on the team.
Soon Lisa’s ability and ambition were to the fore again when the illness of a colleague saw her step up to a management role at just 20 years of age.
The move coincided with a period of rapid growth for Davidsons, which now runs outlets at McCombie’s Court in Aberdeen city centre and Dobbie’s, Aberdeen, as well as the original Inverurie base, and employs 26 people across the three locations.
But for Lisa, the focus for both her and her colleagues remains firmly on her capabilities and not her gender. “Being the only female butcher in the company has never really been an issue for me and it’s not something I’ve ever been made to feel conscious of within the team. I think one or two colleagues might have been unsure at the beginning, but no one has ever given me a hard time – we all just get on with the job, but there are still some people out there who are surprised at what I do.
“The remit is wide and varied, but the thing I enjoy most is interacting with the customers, getting to know them and getting feedback from them. As well as doing that in the shop, it’s great to take the brand and its products out and about to events such as the recent Taste of Grampian and the Royal Highland Show and showcase our industry to the general public.”
Davidsons founder and managing director John Davidson said: “Since Lisa joined the butchery side of the business she has excelled beyond all expectations – and rapidly. When she stepped up to the manager’s role and did such a great job, we fully realised that we had someone special on the team and she was, and continues to be, the right person for the role.
“Ours is a very traditional industry but there can be successful marriages of old and new. There is no doubt that the people who are really getting on are the ambitious youngsters who are coming in, but their success is fuelled in part by a return to the traditional recruitment of apprentices to learn their craft.”