Muddy Boots shuts up shop

London-based independent butchers, Muddy Boots, has entered administration.

Miranda Ballard and her husband Roland launched the business nine years ago to supply supermarkets and online grocers, including Waitrose and Ocado, with top-quality meat. The brand expanded to include five stores in the capital along with a factory, and plans were afoot for further outlets.

In a statement posted on Twitter, Ballard said: “Roland and I are desperately sorry to have taken the incredibly hard decision to close down our company…On Friday, our investors advised we call time and we agreed with them. We have got to £1.3 million turnover, five shops and a factory but we had some lower sales than we predicted in the summer and had got behind with some bills.”

She added: “If it were any other month, we would have taken more time to look at more solutions, but we have Christmas coming and will have customer orders, increased staff time and enormous orders for turkeys, ham etc, coming up and we couldn’t risk committing to all of these without being 100% sure we weren’t going to let anyone down, even more so than we are today. We also couldn’t guarantee that it will definitely be much better next year and, with a bit of a general headwind at the moment anyway, we didn’t have much left to try.”

That statement in full...