Plenty of mince, no sirloin
Your own beef comes back from the abattoir as sides or quarters. Your butcher breaks them down into the cuts customers want. But customers want steaks on a Friday, roasting joints for Sunday and mince all week, while a carcass comes with its own fixed proportions. By Thursday the sirloin is gone, the freezer holds more braising steak than you can sell before Christmas, and a customer who pre-ordered a rib of beef is being told it may be small this week.
Your butcher knows all of this from experience. What they do not have is a clear picture of what is in the counter, the chiller and the freezer, what has been pre-ordered and what the next carcass will yield, all in one place.
Why the balance keeps going wrong
Whole-carcass butchery is a balancing act that a normal stock system does not understand. Cutting a carcass one way gives more steaks and fewer joints; another way gives the opposite. Some decisions, such as whether to hang a cut longer, affect stock for weeks. And the information needed to balance it is spread across the counter, the walk-in chiller, the freezers, the pre-order book and the butcher's head.
- Each carcass differs in weight and conformation, so yields vary.
- Cutting decisions are made before you know the week's demand.
- Pre-orders for special joints sit in a book at the counter.
- Freezer stock is counted rarely, so slow cuts pile up unseen.
- The till records sales by cut only if each cut has its own PLU.
What the imbalance costs
Premium cuts selling out means disappointed customers and lost sales on your most profitable lines. Slow cuts building up in the freezer tie up money and eventually get sold cheaply in boxes or turned into sausages and burgers at a lower value. Without yield records, you cannot tell whether a carcass performed well, whether a cutting approach is paying off, or whether the price you set per kilo covers the real cost of the animal once bone, fat and trim are accounted for.
And every Friday the butcher and the shop manager have the same conversation about why the steaks ran out.
The cutting and yield system we build
- A carcass record for each animal or side received: your own or bought in, tag or kill number, deadweight, date and cost.
- A cutting list suggested for each carcass from current stock across counter, chiller and freezer, recent sales by cut and pre-orders in the book. The butcher changes it as they see fit.
- A yield record as the carcass is cut: weight of each primal and retail cut, trim, fat and bone, entered on a tablet at the block or from the label-printing scale.
- Stock by cut across counter, chiller, hanging and freezer, updated from the scale labels and till sales.
- Pre-orders for Christmas ribs, whole legs of lamb and similar held in one list, linked to the carcass they will come from.
- A weekly view of yield per carcass and value per carcass at your prices, showing which cuts are short, which are building up and how each carcass compared with your expectations.
| Question | Where the answer comes from |
|---|---|
| How much sirloin will this side give? | Past yield records for similar carcasses |
| Is there enough rib for pre-orders? | Pre-order list against carcasses in the chiller |
| What is building up in the freezer? | Stock by cut with dates packed |
| Did this animal pay its way? | Yield and value per carcass against its cost |
Cutting decisions stay with the butcher. The system gives them the facts they normally assemble from memory, and records what they did.
The butchery week afterwards
When a side of beef arrives, the butcher sees a suggested cutting list that allows for the pre-orders and the fact that braising steak is already plentiful in the freezer. They adjust it, cut, and the scale records yields as labels are printed. The shop manager can see what will be in the counter on Friday without asking.
Freezer stock is visible with pack dates, so slow cuts can be put into meat boxes or promoted before they age. Pre-order customers are told early if a joint will be a different size.
After a season, the yield records tell you things that were only guesses before: which breeds or finishing approaches give more of the cuts you sell best, and whether your per-kilo prices reflect the true value of each carcass.
Is your butchery counter like this?
- Premium cuts regularly sell out before the weekend is over.
- The freezer holds more slow cuts than you can sell.
- Yield per carcass is not recorded anywhere.
- Pre-orders live in a book that only the counter staff read.
- You are not sure whether your per-kilo prices cover the animal's real cost.