Coleraine butcher hit by rising costs announces closure in heartfelt video

Coleraine butcher hit by rising costs announces closure in heartfelt video

Coleraine butcher Pat O’Kane has announced he will be closing his doors due to rising costs of electricity and meat.

The butcher, who had only been operating his New Row shop for 18 months, said he was heartbroken to have to close in an emotional video posted on his Facebook page.

“My heart’s completely broken but its completely out of my hands. With  soaring costs through the roof and the footfall’s not on our streets, its a very hard decision that we’ve made and we haven’t taken it lightly at all,” the 24-year-old owner of Pat O’Kane Family Butchers said.

“We’ve been thinking about it since the start of March and we’re now in June.”

Pat said his electricity bill alone had soared to £1,000 a month and the business was also being hit by the cost of rent and the rising cost of meat.

“Our problem is we’re a small business. Some of the bigger businesses have plenty of money behind them. But the business isn’t viable to us any more,” he said.

“It’s not making money – we are losing money every week, so we’ve taken the very responsible thing to do.

“We’ve been going 18 months. It’s not nice to see a young business only starting to get established… and the price of electricity, the price of rent. The electricity was nearly £1,000 a month alone – it’s not viable.

“The price of beef is through the roof, the price of chicken fillet is through the roof – it leaves very little.”

Pat said they had tried not to put their prices up and keep those price rises to a minimum.

“Things are tight for everybody, we know that, but we still try to bring  you the best offers we can do,” he said.

“It’s very hard whenever you’ve family to think about, you’ve bills yourself. There’s a lot to be said for getting your wage every week.”

Pat said with rising costs, not everybody could afford to eat well any more – “We’re going back to things as simple as an omelette, a box of eggs.”

“We want to thank every one of our customers, every single one of you, you know who you are. We want to thank you from the bottom of our hearts, that’s the truth. For myself, Josh and Emma, we do appreciate everything you’ve done for us.

“I’m very sorry we’ve nothing else left to do. We’ll be here for a week or so yet. Thank you very much – we’ll see you in the future, keep us all updated.”