Kevin Bleasdale

Kevin Bleasdale, our Master Butcher, has literally been at the cutting edge of the meat industry for over 30 years. His butchery expertise is vital in ensuring that the Butchery Team consistently meet our high standards and our customers’ specifications.

Over his long career Kevin has developed and refined a remarkable set of skills across all aspects of meat production. These skills are put into practice in our factory on a daily basis as he produces an incredible variety of different meats and cuts for our customers.

Kevin loves producing great meat sourced from excellent livestock. He’s a real perfectionist and delights in the size, shape, depth and colour of a truly great cut. He’s always looking to create something special and that’s why our aging room, where we create our most mature, tender and tasty meats, is his favourite area of Birtwistles.

“Ever since the early days, Birtwistles has always produced great meat. We put extra effort into keeping our customers happy.”

There’s a real art to ageing meat and this is something Kevin is skilled in. Most of our meats are aged between 7 to 14 days but in this area we age it from 12 to 24 days or even longer. This allows the meat to tenderise and break down resulting in richer, fuller, tastier meat.

Kevin often visits customers’ restaurants to showcase our products and carry out live professional cutting demonstrations. This is a great way for a business to gain a better understanding of the work and skill that goes into producing their orders and gives them the chance to learn more about different techniques, meats and cuts that could improve their menus in the future.

Everyone at Birtwistles benefits from Kevin’s passion, expertise and love of meat. He’s a fabulous mentor to our apprentice butchers and works regularly on developing in-house training schemes that improve the skills of our production team. And it’s not just the guys in the factory that benefit from Kevin’s training; he regularly hosts sessions with our Sales and Telesales Departments to teach them all about everything we sell, from beef, lamb and pork to other more exotic meats. He explains each cut, how they’re produced and what makes each one special. This then allows our sales team to provide a better, more knowledgeable service to our customers.