John Clingan, back row, second from right. Rob Clingan, back row, fourth from left
50 years of bringing home the bacon… and sausages
When John Clingan and Derek Meadows set up shop in Northgate Street in 1969, Gloucester and the food retail industry were very different places. Cars used to drive straight through The Cross in the centre of the city, destined for provisions stores dotted around a bustling shopping precinct. Sainsbury’s was a week away from opening its first Gloucester store, on the day Farmhouse Cooked Meats opened its doors for the first time, five months after man had first stepped on to the Moon. Then, Mr Clingan was competing for business, not only against the growing presence of town centre supermarkets, but with 29 butchers' shops in the city too. Now, 50 years on, the Clingan family and what is known as Farmhouse Deli, is still going in Northgate Street – and on Southgate Street and in Cheltenham’s High Street too.
Still behind the counter on the street he first started serving behind halt-a-century ago, Mr Clingan has seen the city and buying habits transformed. “When we started out 50 years ago, we would sell bacon and sausages, as well as cooked meat and cheese, but now we have evolved to offer what today’s customer wants,” he said. “Today’s it’s what we call handheld food: sausage rolls, prepared sandwiches, scotch eggs and pies, but the customers still like what we offer. “If you give a customer what they want, they’ll come back for more.” Although now something of a Gloucester institution in his own right, Mr Clingan grew up in Kirkcudbright in the west of Scotland. From a line of Scottish grocers, the family moved south after the war to run the Pelican Inn in Gloucester, where a 10-year-old John would be put to work. It was there he met Derek Meadows and the two
became firm friends and, in the following years, workmates and then business partners. After stints working for Mr Meadows at the Constance Hotel in the Snack Spot, they took over a Market Parade
September 2019 | www. punchline-gloucester .com | 11
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