Our new website and the online counter: why it is a better way to buy halal meat in Bradford

Why a butcher needed a proper website

Most butchers' websites are a photo of the shop and a phone number. Ours was not much more until this year. Meanwhile the people we serve were ordering everything else on their phones, and the only way to order meat online in Bradford was from a supermarket-style site that sends fixed packs by courier. That is not how our customers buy meat. They want a particular cut, a particular size, from a butcher they trust, on the day they cook. So we built a site around that instead of around a warehouse.

The online counter

The online counter is one page with six counters on it: chicken, lamb, beef, mutton, goat and turkey, plus meat boxes, BBQ and marinated, mince and keema, offal and the spice corner. Pick the animal and you get the full list of what that counter sells, as it is sold in the shop: whole birds and portions, legs and shoulders, chops, steaks, curry cut, diced, mince, bones and offal.

What makes it a counter rather than a catalogue is what happens on each product. A lamb leg is not one thing. On the counter page it is on the bone or boned, whole or curry cut, small pieces or large, 500g or a kilo or two. Those are the questions the butcher would ask you, so they are the options on the page. Under them is a note box. Anything you would say across the counter goes in there, and it prints on the ticket the butcher works from.

Six things it does that the old way did not

It is open when the shop is shut

You can order in the evening, after the shop has closed, for collection or delivery the next day. You decide what you are cooking on Tuesday night, order it, and it is cut on Wednesday morning. No queue, no trying to remember the list.

The ticket is exactly what you asked for

An order given over a busy counter can drift. An order typed by you, with the size and the note, is the same every time. A repeat order for the weekly chicken and mince takes about a minute.

The price is the till price

We did not build an online price list. We put the counter list online. Same product, same price, and it changes on the site the day it changes on the ticket. No service fee, no online premium, no delivery charge within 7 miles.

Collection is ready in about 2 hours

Order at lunchtime, collect at 5 on the way home. Order after 6pm and it is cut first thing from 9am. You get a text or email when it is waiting; give the name on the order at the counter.

Delivery is free and same day

Our own driver, two runs a day, 1pm to 4pm and 6pm to 8pm, £25 minimum, within 7 miles. The basket page checks your postcode and offers the next run. There is a page for each area we cover, from Manningham to Halifax; the free delivery article explains the whole thing.

It tells you which cut to buy

Every counter has a cuts guide, and the recipe pages name the cut and the size for karahi, nihari, bhuna, rogan josh, biryani, paya and the rest. If you have never bought mutton for a curry and do not know shoulder from leg, the site tells you, in the words the butcher would use.

The four cuts charts, one per counter. Tap any of them to open it full size and save it to your phone.

What did not change

The shop. The same two butchers cut the online orders as serve the counter. Every cut is HMC certified and monitored from slaughter to counter, with the certificate on the door and the listing on the HMC website. The food hygiene rating is 5, the top band, awarded by Bradford Council and published by the Food Standards Agency, with no points deducted at the last inspection. We are rated 4.8 out of 5 on Google from more than 70 reviews. The website changes how you reach the counter, not what is on it.

What is on the site besides the counter

Delivery and collection with the runs, the zone and the minimum. Our HMC approval and halal meat, explained, which goes through what the certification checks and what a sign that only says halal does not. Qurbani, back next spring. The News blog, where the practical questions get answered: what curry cut means, how much meat for 10 people, lamb or mutton for curry, how long meat keeps in the fridge. And the order page, which is the one to save to your home screen.

What we would like from you

Use it, and tell us what is awkward. If a cut is missing, if an option is wrong, if the note box did not do what you expected, message the counter on WhatsApp at 07479 462297. The site was built by a butcher's shop, not a software company, and it gets better when customers tell us what to fix. If it worked, a line on Google helps the next family find us.

Related reading

Ordering halal meat online in Bradford is now easy
Free halal meat delivery in Bradford: the 7-mile zone
How to check a butcher is really HMC certified