SHOPPERS are able to collect their meat when they call into Thurnscoe post office for their stamps.
“Our customers were a bit surprised that a butcher’s was going to be in the post office,” said Steve Walker, who was a butcher at Asda’s Wakefield meat factory before becoming sub-postmaster at Houghton Road ten years ago.
Government changes which threaten the future of small post offices have forced many sub-postmasters to look at diversifying to retain their livelihood.
For Steve it meant going back to butchery, a trade he was in from leaving school, and he’s brought his son James, 25, into the business with him.
“A lot of people panicked, thinking that we were going to shut the post office side, until we reassured them that it would a post office cum butchers.
“We’d been thinking about it for some time as we’ve lost a lot of trade through decisions by the Government, then when the KwikSave supermarket closed last October and Thurnscoe was left without a butcher we decided to go ahead.”
