Stirling Variety Meats to open new Mount Barker store after Woolworths fire

The owners lost hundreds of thousands of dollars when the nearby Woolworths was destroyed in a huge fire. But now they’re preparing for a new home.

One of the Adelaide Hills’ most popular butcher’s shops that was devastated by the Stirling Woolworths fire has found a new home – and has big plans for the future.

Stirling Variety Meats was one of several smaller stores in the shopping mall forced to close after a massive fire ripped through the Woolies in October.

The $25m fire was allegedly started by two teenage boys, from Heathfield and Aldgate, who are charged with arson.

The butcher’s, owned by Chris and Giselle Pfitzner, is well-known across the Hills for its old-fashioned, fritz-for-kids service and for preparing its cuts and produce in-store. It often has customers come from across the state – even Kangaroo Island.

With a rebuilt Stirling mall years away, the couple is preparing to open a new store in Mount Barker – in a new development – bringing all its employees.

They’re keeping the Stirling Variety Meats name and intend to go back to Stirling when the centre is rebuilt, running two stores.

Chris and Giselle Pfitzner of Stirling Variety Meats outside in their new store space in Mount Barker. Picture: Kelly Barnes

Ms Pfitzner said the months since the fire had been very stressful, with the couple losing about $150,000 in turnover just in the week before Christmas.

Outside their butchers shop in Stirling Village before the fire. Photo: Instagram

The butcher’s shop front after the fire. Picture: Supplied

And the blaze destroyed everything in their store, costing them about $300,000 in lost machinery.

They initially continued to pay their employees’ wages, and coughed up for contaminated stock, out of their savings.

“In that first week afterwards, I don’t think I slept, you don’t know what to do next, there are so many things going through your brain that nothing sticks to prioritise,” she said.

“We just literally didn’t know what was going to happen.”

Seven speciality shops were forced to close or relocate after the fire ripped the mall, which was demolished earlier this year after the blaze rendered it structurally unsound.

The new store is in the just-opened Woolworths Mount Barker South centre – giving the couple a blank canvas and build the ideal butcher’s workshop to eventually service the two outlets.

“We literally do everything on site – we bring in the whole animals and cut and make everything fresh to go in the tray,” Ms Pfitzner said.

“It would go straight from the back to the customer. There’s a knack to selling the whole animal, to be able to sell everything produced from that animal and Chris is very good at that.

“So now I can design where we’re going to be working from.”

Stirling Village as seen from the air after the fire. Picture: Supplied

Inside the Woolworths at Stirling after the fire. Picture: Supplied

The couple is determined to reopen their Stirling store once the mall is rebuilt.

“We have a lot of clients and customers there worried about that – we want to get back into that shopping complex.

“Stirling is where it all began for us so we want to go back there, and have both Stirling and Mount Barker.

“The Mount Barker site is perfect to manufacture our produce and then Stirling is not much a production area, we can scale down a little bit but still produce what we always have.”

They aim to open the Mount Barker South store at the end of March, around Easter – if everything falls into place.

“That’s our second-most busiest time, so we’re hoping to be as close to the end of March as we can – in theory, we should be able to manage, but in practise it could be different.”

Originally published as Stirling Variety Meats to open new Mount Barker store after Woolworths fire