Sausage swap for Thurston Butchers near Bury St Edmunds and Fodder in Woodbridge in aid of Gatehouse

A pair of Suffolk butchers are launching a sausage swap to get each business’s products out to a wider audience and to raise money for charity.

Thurston Butchers will exchange some of its festive pork, brie and cranberry sausages for gluten-free Thai green pork sausages, made by Fodder in Melton, near Woodbridge on Thursday.

Profits from the new initiative’s sales will go to Gatehouse charity in Bury St Edmunds, for its foodbank which it uses to help low earning households.

Alastair Angus, owner of Thurston Butchers, said: "I was looking at new ways of working with businesses. Fodder fits the bill as a new business we would like to work alongside.

"It is important to recognise that butchers shops are not necessarily in competition with each other, rather the bigger, more commercial alternatives such as supermarkets."

The businesses have a few batches of the other’s sausages as specials to sell, but if the idea is popular this could see more collaborative swaps done between the pair in the future.

Harry Wolff-Evans, owner of Fodder, said: "Since opening my doors in May I’ve been following Thurston on social media.

"What Alastair is doing there is exactly the kind of thing we strive for in our own shop and we immediately connected online and gave each other support on those platforms.

"It is the creativity and hard work on recipe and product development that makes independents like us and Thurston so special. One of those key recipes for any shop being the noble sausage, so where better to start?"

On what the butchers were doing, Gatehouse’s chief executive Amanda Bloomfield said she was really excited to be involved in this initiative.

She added: "We are really grateful to be chosen as the charity to benefit and their support will go direct to supplying food to those most vulnerable in West Suffolk."

Alastair said he and Harry really wanted to help the charity and hoped their customers would fully get behind the swap.

He said: "It is a great idea to do something I have never seen done before and put two Suffolk businesses on the map.

"Also we wanted to feed back into the community and, with Gatehouse, our sausage swap will hopefully help support families in need."