Mad Butcher back in the family

The Mad Butcher franchise is back in family hands and new owners Michael Morton and Julie Leitch are making plans to grow the business and “restore its sizzle”.

The couple bought back the business earlier in the year from publicly-listed company Veritas Investments, which owned it for five years.
“Both Julie and I have a strong emotional attachment to the Mad Butcher brand, which of course was started by her father, Sir Peter Leitch, almost 50 years ago,” says Morton. “We’re passionate about the brand and didn’t want it going anywhere else. The success of the Mad Butcher has always been about it being very much part of the local community, combined with the family-owned and operated nature of the stores. 

“We’re friends with a lot of the franchisees and suppliers and we want to get back to running it like a family business with everyone in the same boat and going in the same direction. 
“Julie and I are focusing on stabilising the business and making sure all the franchisees are secure and making decent money. Then we want to grow by improving the stores and launching new products and services.”

Many of the Mad Butcher staff have been with the brand a very long time. Morton himself is a 20-plus year veteran, while Julie has worked in the business since she was a child. 
“I started out working on Sundays and during the school holidays, with my sister Angie. Dad sacked me a couple of times but he always had to reinstate me,” she laughs. 

Over the years, the Mad Butcher has been a major supporter of worthy causes, including Ronald McDonald House, the burns unit and Kidz First at Middlemore Hospital, funding incubators for neo-natal wards, providing glue ear treatment for schoolkids and, of course, Sir Peter’s beloved Warriors and boxer Joseph Parker. 

“We’ll continue doing that sort of thing because, at heart, we’re old-fashioned butchers who are very much part of the local community, just like the ones your grandparents used to go to,” says Morton.  

Reflecting on the Veritas years, he says the sale to a publicly-listed company did not go as they thought it would. “I was there, yes, but it was managed as a public company. Julie and I would have run things differently.
“Now we have the opportunity to do just that.”

Photo: Sir Peter Leitch, daughter Julie and Michael Morton.