What a ride

What a ride Mate – the life and times of the mad butcher
Peter Leitch with Phil Gifford, by Harper Collins Publishers


Veteran sports writer Phil Gifford tells the story of The Mad Butcher, laced with comments from family, business and personal friends and supported by photography.

It’s an account of a young lad with dyslexia, at a time when learning difficulties were not understood, who left school at fifteen with no qualifications and went on to create a butcher chain of 34 stores which when sold recently, was turning over $3million a week.

Working life began for Peter Leitch as a Post Office telegraph delivery boy, but six months later he decided to be a butcher, for no other reason than to make a living.

With an ‘on the job’ apprenticeship under his belt, an honest approach secured Leitch a loan to start his first shop, but he admits running a business was learnt the hard way.

“What people don’t really understand is that to this day I don’t know all of my alphabet or my times tables, which is not a good thing if you’re in business”.

There are practical lessons for the business reader.

For instance, The Mad Butcher works on a philosophy of huge turnover, low margins and believes that while quality and service are important, price is what drives real success.

Anecdotes show support for family and friends comes before anything else, reveal evidence of an irrepressible practical joker, as well as someone who is not afraid to shed a tear or two.

On the Mad Butcher’s advertising style, Bill Francis GM of talk for Radio Network says Leitch’s unique home-grown way of communicating was never about correct pronunciation or grammatical exactitude, but was instead the result of someone who spoke naturally about how they felt and it hooked the listener.

Stories about sponsorship cover numerous causes and events often to benefit children or underdog sports like softball and of course rugby league and the Warriors.

Long time friend, Gifford succeeds in giving a genuine insight into a high profile kiwi who received the Queen’s Service Medal in 1991 and was named one of N Z’s most influential people of the year in 2006 by The NZ Listener.

Usefulness rating 8/10
Appeared in NZ Business
© 2008 L Donald
all rights reserved.