The shop bell will sound for the last time this Saturday. Keurslager Heuker in Groningen closes for good. “People drive around for our farmer’s liver sausage.”
She pays for two slices of black pudding, two rib chops and a piece of liver sausage. Butcher’s wife Hennie Heuker (62) thanks regular customer Paul van Zwieten (65) by way of farewell. And he her.
Van Zwieten likes the products of butcher Heuker in Groningen. “The liverwurst he makes has such a special taste. It is the best I have ever tasted, so delicious in the evening with drinks.”
Now that Heuker is parting ways, many regular customers are left without a butcher. Van Zwieten also: “That will take a lot of searching,” he says. “And just find such sweet and social people who give you the feeling of a local shop.”
‘We are here together six days a week’
After almost 65 years, the butcher’s shop on the Paterswoldseweg in Groningen is disappearing.
Egbert Heuker (63) and his wife took over the business in 1982 and planned to continue for a while, but when they heard in early January that Hennie was ill, they decided to make the decision. They decided to stop immediately.
He: “One person alone in the business is simply not possible. We are here together six days a week.”
They did this for 41 years in a row, years with an employee, years without. With the exception of three weeks’ vacation in the summer, they worked days from 7 a.m. to 6 p.m. year after year.
She: “We did do something, yes.”
He: “It doesn’t come easily to you.”
She: “We have always had a good time.”
He: “I have never walked down reluctantly.”
‘I started when I was sixteen’
They met each other at the Groeneveld butcher’s shop on the Verlengde Hereweg. He was a butcher there, she worked in the shop. They started dating and one day they bought the entire building on Paterswoldseweg. They moved above the business. “I was the youngest butcher in town, now I am the oldest.”
He – a farmer’s son from Marum – always wanted to become a butcher, just like an uncle of his. “I started when I was sixteen and I really enjoyed it: the work, dealing with customers, making sausages. It’s never boring, no day is the same.”
While he mainly worked at the back, Hennie was always ahead. She praises the farmer’s liver sausage and her husband’s dried sausage, which won professional competitions with it. “People drive around for that,” he says. “We send the sausages to enthusiasts in North Holland,” she says.
‘The butcher’s trade is not popular’
He thinks it’s a shame that another store is disappearing. “A young couple could earn a good living here, it is a nice business. It is almost impossible to find a successor, it is financially difficult and there is almost no enthusiasm for it. Apparently the butcher’s trade is not popular.”
They still remember how lively their part of the Paterswoldseweg was. There was all kinds of stuff, says Hennie. “A bakery, Jos Beeres drinks store, a greengrocer, two florists, a hairdresser, a drapery shop, a pots and pans shop, two clothing stores, the cigar shop on the corner. It was a shopping street, but it’s all gone.”
Their customer base remained, their offering changed over time. “Youth eat less of simmered meat, they opt for fresh meals,” says Hennie. “There are so many people who never cook. They are busy or they are old and alone: cooking for you alone is not an option.” In winter they could go to Heuker for stew of kale, endive, sauerkraut and hot lightning, for chowder and bean soup. In the summer, lasagna, red cabbage hash and chili con carne were sold.
Customers are told that this Saturday will be the last time they can visit ‘their’ butcher. They write notes and hand over presents. And wish the Heuker family well and all the best.
‘Butcher disappears from the streets’
There are hardly any independent greengrocers anymore, more and more bakers are going under and the professional butcher is also having a hard time. According to the trade association Royal Dutch Butchers (KNS), the independent butcher is struggling with a lack of successors. “We see the butcher’s shop disappearing from the street scene,” says KNS spokesperson Eva Westerhof. “High rent and lack of staff are detrimental to the butchers. It is a craft, you have to be quite an all-rounder to run a butcher’s shop.”
At the same time, she also sees young entrepreneurs taking the leap. “Consider, for example, the Stadsslager in the Steentilstraat in Groningen. There are more new butcher shops that focus on a wide and fresh range in which meat predominates.”
According to Westerhof, the butcher is not affected by the fact that more people are becoming vegetarian. “Slightly less meat is being eaten, but in general meat consumption has been stable for years.”