DELI OF THE MONTH With two popular sites across south London and a third in the pipeline, Dugard & Daughters has built up a loyal customer base over the last nine years. Despite its founders’ retailing nous, this “butcher and larder” concept was quite the leap of faith in the beginning. Interview by Tom Vaughan
From zero to food heroes NEIL AND ROSIE DUGARD met in a supermarket. Or to be precise, they met while overseeing the fitout of a supermarket (a Budgens, in fact, for whom they both worked at the time). Fast forward nearly 20 years and the two are still on the shop floor, it just happens to be their own shop, Dugard & Daughters. The husband-and-wife team might now boast two sites in premium locations in south London, but their mini-empire was originally born out of adversity. “We’d just VITAL STATISTICS
Location: Herne Hill Arch 286, Milkwood Rd, SE24 0EZ & Earlsfield 507 Garratt Lane, SW18 4SW Retail space: 92sq m (Herne Hill), 111sq m (Earlsfield) Staff no.: 20 (across two sites) Average margin: 35% Average basket spend: £16 58
June 2022 | Vol.23 Issue 5
given birth to our second daughter in 2013 when Rosie was made redundant,” says Neil, who at the time was working for independent retailer Andrew Thornton at his Crouch End Budgens franchise. “Then, out of the blue, I was made redundant six weeks later. We had a newborn, a three year-old, a mortgage, and no job between us. I pretended to look for jobs for a few months but, really, I wanted to do my own thing.” Sitting in a drawer was a business plan Neil had written a few years prior for a
deli-cum-health-food store. “We never did anything with it because it was like stepping off a scary bridge. But I got it out and dusted it off and thought: ‘what if we add meat to this and make it the focus?’” That concept turned out to be the blueprint for Dugard & Daughters – a “butchers and larder” that sells everything from fresh bread, pasta and dried goods through to cheese and charcuterie, with a butchery counter full of rare-breed meat and free-range chicken as the central focus point.
