Family butcher closing doors after serving Wolverhampton community for four generations

Bates Butchers was started by Sophia Bates in about 1930 and has since been run by her son Edwin, grandson Colin and great grandson Daniel.

But after surviving the Second World War, a fire in 2014 and most recently the Covid-19 pandemic, spiralling electricity costs have forced the shop to shut.

The doors will close for the final time on Saturday.

“Everyone’s upset because we’re part of the community and we’ve been there so long,” said Daniel. “I think I’ll look back and see how lucky we’ve been, but the big thing for me is it’s not just a shop, it’s the thing our family has been associated with for four generations and people have always known we are there.

“The hardest thing is we are saying goodbye to these people.”

And Daniel admits some conversations with his customers about closing down have been really difficult: “You’re fighting back the tears, because the last thing I want to be doing is start crying in the shop.”

After starting in Dudley Road, the Bates family owned several shops in Wolverhampton during the trade’s golden era of the 1960s.

Edwin’s shop in Green Lane was followed by further stores in Warstones Drive, Blackburn Avenue and Pendeford Avenue - with Daniel, now 48, starting out alongside his grandad and dad as a 12-year-old.

And it is that shop in Pendeford Avenue that has carried the Bates name all the way until tomorrow when it serves its final customers.

“The customers are going to be the biggest thing I miss,” said Daniel. “You become part of their lives.

“They saw me when I was 12. I was the Saturday lad, so I’ve known some of them since then.”

There was no greater proof that customers have been the heart of the business for almost a century than when, four days before Christmas in 2014, a fire broke out at the shop.

The blaze ruined everything - but rather than see their customers’ Christmases ruined, the shop was open again two days later to serve people their turkeys, pigs in blankets and more from a makeshift counter.

“I opened the door and all this black smoke came out,” said Daniel. “We got a cleaning team in and all of us just stripped everything, counters had to go, fridges, everything.

“I borrowed a counter off Wolverhampton Butchers that I put on a stand and then we worked through the night to prep everything and get the orders through.

“At any other time, we would have probably closed, got it all done and then reopened later on, but because it was Christmas we couldn’t do it, and luckily we managed to just get through.”

Bates Butchers also came through the Covid-19 pandemic, but Daniel said the energy bill crisis was a bridge too far.

“I have thought of everything as best as I can, but it’s just been forced with the electric bills,” he said. “We haven’t lost any customers, they’ve still been with us, but the margin has dropped so much because the overheads are going up and up and we’re not entitled to anything.

“When something like that doubles - and everything we have is electric, so there’s nothing we can cut back on - that I would have to put my prices up by quite a bit.

“It’s not like it’s jumped up £100, when it doubles it’s a lot of money to try to pull back.

“It’s just one of those where there’s no way out for us.”

And Daniel warned that other small businesses would be forced into the same decision.

“It's closing the high street down,” he said. “We won’t be the last, unfortunately, unless something drastic is done to change it.

“You got more help through Covid, that support was great for small businesses, but now there’s nothing.”

Despite the upset at being forced to close down, Daniel wished to thank his loyal customers for decades of support.

He said: “We’ve had some really loyal customers over the years, so from the whole Bates family we want to thank everybody for their support over all these years - we’re very lucky we’ve had some smashing customers.”