Our first Hog Roast blog post
Happy New Year, and welcome to the new blog page for the D J Haggett website!
Added: 13 January 2019
I’m Dave’s wife, Ali, and, from January 2019, I’ll be curating regular blogs on this page. Obviously, we’ll be sharing some of the amazing weddings and corporate events we attend through the year – but much more than that, we’ll be commenting on all things ‘food and hospitality’. Now is an interesting time for the catering and hospitality industry in the UK, and we’ll be offering some comment pieces and guest blog posts on some of the most pressing topics. I’m actually a historian of health and medicine by trade! So, I’ll be authoring some interesting context pieces on the history of food, health, and the cultural importance of food, when it comes to celebrations, family and community.
The beginnings of it all
But first, a little more about us! Dave’s background is in butchery. He trained with a local Somerset butchery firm and moved to Devon to open his own shop in Silverton, in 1988. Here, he built a thriving business, founded upon traditional butchery skills. At the same time, he developed a reputation for hand-made pies and sausages, winning many awards over the years and, at one time, supplying Fortnum and Mason. In the noughties, the butchery expanded into a large village store, with a strong focus on locally produced, speciality items. At the weekends, Dave and his team supplied hog roasts for weddings and local events. Initially cooked on traditional, solid-fuel burners, Dave soon designed his own portable gas roasters – a safe, clean design he uses to this day.
Increasingly in demand for hog roasts at weddings, over the last 15 years, we’ve expanded our team of experts to include chefs and front-of-house staff. Menus soon developed from the original ‘pork & crackling in a bap’, to include fantastic BBQs, spit-roast mixed meats, beautiful home-made salads, desserts, cheese & charcuterie boards, canapes and much more. We also offer a sit-down, formal wedding service and alternative, three-course menus on our sister site, Nora Haggett. Finally, if you’re an organisation requiring a hog roast for corporate events, we cater for large numbers, with ease and efficiency!
Values
Being a small, family business, our values provide the foundation to all that we do. Traceability of all our meat is paramount and we provide only locally reared, free range meat. Wherever possible, we source vegetables and salads from local suppliers. Our desserts are handmade locally. We also take our responsibility to the environment very seriously – disposable crockery products are biodegradable, made from plant fibre, and we take care to recycle wherever possible. As attitudes towards diets, responsible meat consumption and the environment have begun to change, we have introduced a delicious range of vegetarian and vegan dishes to complement the menus. However, we must say that our real passion and most important value is our commitment to offering you, the customer, a service that is second to none! From the moment you contact us, we promise to make your special occasion one that you will never forget. We offer a range of example menus but can tailor these to your requirements or provide alternative, bespoke menus. Our aim, whether it be a hog roast at a wedding, or corporate catering, is to ensure that you don’t have to worry about a thing. Leave it to the experts!
Follow us on our journey through 2019 here on the blog, and follow us on Facebook and Twitter for more images and testimonials!