OUR STORY
Colin Holt is an award winning Chef, having been the recipient of 2 Chef Hats from the Sydney Morning Herald Good Food Guide Awards for 3 consecutive years (1997, 1998, 1999).
In addition to owning and operating his own restaurants, Colin has also had the opportunity of working alongside some of Australia's well known and respected Chefs.
Colin's extensive and broad experience of working in some of Sydney's award winning restaurants include: Chez Oz, Claudes, Le Triannon, Bistro Moncur and then he opened and operated Bistro Pavé.
ICON Hospitality Group gave Colin the opportunity in 2000 to lease its Bistros within a collection of six hotels. Colin stayed with the group for seven years and secured a reputation as one of Sydney’s finest and most diverse chefs.
Jeff Winfield had been working in IT in the financial services sector for 20 years. Jeff’s extensive experience included the implementation of application systems, managing customer relationships, supplier management, people management and financial management.
In 2007, Colin was ready to hang up his apron and Jeff was ready to leave the corporate world of IT. Both became aware that while quality meat products were readily available to restaurants and the food service industry, there were no retail outlets offering the same standard of produce.
Colin and Jeff also had fond memories of the Portugese Deli that was located on Oxford Street, Darlinghurst which sadly closed its doors in the mid 1990’s. Both eagerly wanted to bring a delicatessen back to their local community.
From here, the duo set out to open HUDSON MEATS – a retail outlet like no other, a store that would be more than just a ‘regular butcher store’. It would focus on bringing the farmers’ product direct to the customer, and become a one-stop-shop with deli items and dry goods. In August 2007 they opened their first store.
WHY HUDSON MEATS
We want people to know their food source.
We specialise in sourcing regional produce and communicate directly with the farmers.
Our preference is to have provenance of a product, which therefore has us building relationships and buying direct from the producer.
Knowing where a product is grown and how the product is raised gives us confidence that we are delivering to our customers the best available product.
We ensure that all products are chemical free and not administered any growth hormones. Antibiotics may be given to an animal for their own health, but will be used sparingly.
Some of our products may not be certified organic, but we work to ensure the products are grown organically and our preference is for pasture-raised.
Pasture-raised ensures that the animal is grown and fed naturally instead of being fed and raised on supplements which an animal was not naturally intended to eat.
We do not promote or support products sourced from feed-lots. Although it may be necessary to provide grain to an animal for diet, particularly during times of drought, overall we do not support total grain-fed for those animals that should be pasture-raised.
We do not promote that you should be eating meat every day. We promote that when you do, ensure that it is pasture-raised and of the highest quality.
We follow the paddock to plate philosophy.