Wild game sales soar as customers seek an alternative to the traditional Christmas turkey during nation-wide meat shortages
With supplies of turkey limited this Christmas after a labour shortage forced poultry producers to cut production by a fifth, a growing number of people are turning to wild British game as an alternative.
Wild game specialist Wild and Game has seen orders soar in recent weeks: it is already 35% up on sales of Christmas hampers compared to the whole period last year.
Wild and Game’s hampers, priced from to £104.99 to £359.99, include products such as pheasant, duck and partridge three bird roasts, muntjac legs, wild boar sausage meat, game pigs in blankets, pheasant Wellingtons and game charcuterie. Wild and Game also has a reliable supply of goose, which is selling well.
Wild and Game was founded in Bristol in 2017 and sells wild game and game products to people across the UK via its website, and wholesale to supermarkets and independent stores across the country.
The company is built on a belief that the UK needs to rediscover its tradition of eating game; while game is a plentiful, sustainable food source, it had fallen out of fashion and many people lacked confidence when cooking it. The company has tackled this by using game as a core ingredient in many of the UK’s favourite dishes, from sausages, pies and pasties to chilli and curry. It’s also teaching people new, modern ways to cook with game through its free recipe booklets and online recipes.
The wild British game stocked by Wild and Game is highly sustainable: deer and rabbit, for example, have to be culled to maintain balance in the environment. Wild game is also leaner and higher in protein than farmed meat, making it an increasingly popular choice for health conscious customers.
Steven Frampton, co-founder of Wild and Game said: “Wild game is an excellent alternative to turkey for your Christmas dinner – these are actually far more interesting and flavoursome meats, and they are easy to cook as part of a traditional roast.
“We’ve seen a huge rise in the number of people ordering game from us for Christmas because they are worried about shortages of turkey. The game industry has not been hit by labour shortages in the same way as other parts of the farming sector and we are confident we will fulfil all our Christmas orders. It’s great that more people are willing to give game a try – we hope that people will love it as much as we do and come back for more.”