McWhinney's Sausages - The Family History & Heritage
Since 1898 we have been the specialists in sausages, and we continue to produce a variety of mouth-watering recipes.
Our world-famous McWhinney's brand is available in Bigfoot, Premium, Standard and Gold, we are proud to be the home of the world famous Bigfoot sausage.
Many people assume I own all the McWhinney's butcher shops in Northern Ireland.
In fact I only owned one of them!
McWhinney's is a fifth generation family business currently run by Kevin McWhinney. Founded in 1898 by Kevin's great great grandfather the business started out as a local butcher's shop, it remained the same for the first three generations.
In 1968, Kevin's father Ken McWhinney, the fourth generation, branched away from his father and uncle and opened his own shop at Bridge Street, Comber. Ken's son, Kevin, fifth generation, left school in 1982 to join his father in the butchery business. Ken decided that the business needed to expand for his expanding family and decided that the catering industry was ready for a better sausage than it had been used to.
In 1983 Ken and his son Kevin exhibited at the NIFEX show in Belfast, and were sucessful in setting up a distribution network throughout Northern Ireland. The business grew steadily for ten years until 1993 when it had outgrown its premises.
Ken purchased a 17000sq. ft factory shell on 1.3 acre site but unfortunately he did not see his dream come to light as he died on the 5th September 1993 at the age of 54.
McWhinney's Sausages now passed to Ken's son Kevin who was faced with the dilemma of moving from a small butcher's shop to a full EC approved factory. Kevin moved into the factory in August 1994.
Today, McWhinney's hold a substantial market share of the catering market in Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the Spanish mainland, Majorca, Turkey and in 2007 celebrated entering the Canadian marketplace.
McWhinney's know that there are cheaper catering sausages available, but our customers value our extra quality and taste, we are sure that when you taste our's for yourself, you will agree that they are "Not just another sausage...".
Since selling our family butchers shop in Bridge Street, Comber in 1994, we started to mass produce our quality Butcher Sausage for the retail, catering and export markets in our EC Approved factory in Bangor, and we have remained there ever since.
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