Dicksons: A taste of tradition
Dicksons is one of the North East’s best-known family businesses, with its famous saveloy dips, mince and pork pies, sizzling sausages and pease pudding having satisfied tastebuds for decades. But times change, and to maintain its market standing in a constantly evolving world, the business has undergone a rebrand, refit and reinvigoration, to embrace new customers while continuing to cater for its traditional fanbase across its 34-shop estate. Here, Colin Young visits Dicksons’ South Shields factory and a nearby high street store to learn more about the business and its commitment to delivering great food every day.
March 15, 2025
Words by Colin Young
Photography by Meg Jepson & Jamie Haslam
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BREAKFAST
24,000 sausages sold in Dicksons sandwiches a week
Breakfast. The most important meal of the day.
And at Dicksons, it’s so important, you can get one all day – bacon, sausage, egg and hash browns, all ready to go on the hot plates.
The MI Dicksons journey started about half a century before the company’s actual formation in 1953, when Fritz Kuch left the family farm in southern Germany and moved to the North East.
Just after the Second World War, Michael Irwin Dickson started an apprenticeship with a pork butcher in Howdon, where he met Fritz’s daughter Helen.
And so the Dickson family and brand began.
The couple set up their first shop in Prince Edward Road, in South Shields, in 1953.
It’s still open, busy to this day, and will undergo one of the first refits under the firm’s new brand, which includes the ‘Making Your Day Since 1953’ tagline, a nod to the rich history of a company established to provide meals for working-class families throughout the day.
The bright red lettering may be a return to the Dicksons original butcher shopfront, but times, tastes and shopping habits have changed, with the company’s first newly-branded store in Blyth emphasising the broad range of products beyond its founders’ traditional wares.
Supermarkets cater for the majority of those customers now.
The flat above the shop where Michael Dickson lived as a toddler, while his parents built the business, is still there, but is no longer a family home.
Company chair Michael is 73 and still working.
“I was always very fond of the business and the people,” says Michael, posing for a photoshoot alongside daughter Elena and son Mike, the firm’s third generation.
He adds: “It was an extension of home life.”
Throughout N magazine’s time at Dicksons’ South Shields factory and nearby Horsley Hill store, Michael is constantly moving us to keep a clear route for customers from high street to fridges and the sandwich bar.
He says: “The first home I remember was above the shop, back to when I toddled, and I’ve been here – with the company – ever since.
“My father died when I was 14, and there was only me, my mum Helen, Christine – my older sister by a year – and younger sister Dorothy.
“I really don’t know how my mum coped, but she was resilient and Christine had to grow up quickly and help her run it.
“We had to be very conscious of the business, which employed more than 30 people then, so it was a huge responsibility and one we didn’t ask for.”
One of Michael’s first tasks after his father’s death was to replicate the recipes he had been using from day one.
But, as he’d never written them down, it took weeks to perfect the measurements of the spices and meats.
Today, though, it isn’t just the products requiring recipes.
In a world where software dictates so many lives, Dicksons must too continue refining its technological techniques to remain a tasty proposition across online platforms.
Indeed, product and marketing director Elena’s grandfather Irwin never had to worry about hits, clicks and likes on the Dicksons’ social media accounts, or the importance of QR codes.
But then neither did Elena when she joined the company 20 years ago.
“It is time-intensive and also very important,” she says, checking her phone.
She adds: “Online is where our new customers are, and it’s about reaching out to student-age people and young families, and finding a way to be attractive to them.
“I think people know us and know the quality we provide, so it’s about telling them about our whole product range, tapping into a younger audience and trends while bringing our traditional customers with us.”
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DINNER
Annual tonnage of pease pudding 389,376 kilograms
Annual tonnage of cheese savoury 79,352 kilograms
Pastries, pies and rolls, the famous saveloy dip, the lunch deals – pie, chips and gravy – full fridges, freshly-made sandwich packs and rolls, salad bowls, vegetarian options…
Dinner is catered for. And then some.
The second Dickson generation took control of the business five years after Irwin’s death and, after Christine initially took the reins, Michael joined after completing his A levels.
He says: “It was a very strong business, but naturally without direction, and we blundered around in the dark for a bit.
“Christine blundered less than me because she was in earlier and was a very bright lass and very good at things I’m not very good at, which was accounts and paying people – the very fundamentals if you want to run a business.
“She was formidable; I remember people telling me they were terrified of her.
“We offset each other.
“We sound like the perfect team, but we were worse in private.
“Like any teenage pair, we used to fight and couldn’t bear to be in the same room sometimes.
“But then it was us against the world, right?
“It really was, and we got on with it, we got through the tough times, and we built a fantastic business.”
They bought a second shop within three months in Ocean Road – redefining and redesigning it into an all-day butchers and deli – before expanding further into Wallsend.
There’s a black and white photo in the new Dicksons brand book of a beaming Christine beside North East comedy legend Bobby Thompson at the opening in 1978, surrounded by giggling housewives.
Michael says: “It was like going to the moon.
“We were no longer in our comfort zone, and it was completely different and a great learning curve.”
The company’s expansion prompted the purchase of its first factory and storage base in South Shields, where it remained for ten years, buying 11 shops and establishing the Dickson range as one of the best in the region.
Then, anticipating significant legal changes to food hygiene and preparation under new EU regulations in 1990, Dicksons moved again to its current headquarters off Boldon Lane.
It’s here where the meat magic is done.
Michael says: “We decided to go for this greenfield site, as it was then, but to pay for it, we had to grow further.
“I bought two companies who did nothing but wholesale work, which took us into
a completely different market and began something of a treadmill.
“The ambition was always to get from A to B; it was never really about getting rich quick.
“That wasn’t the thing. It was to fill an ambition, to feel as though you’d lived and you’d done something, and I think we achieved that.”
And keeping it in the family was just as important.
Two years after setting up a family council, Dicksons was named Coutts’ UK Family Business of the Year in 2010.
Today, Elena is partnered by retail growth and development director Mike, who returned
to the North East in 2016 after working as a pharmacist in Manchester.
Their siblings Daniela and Matthew have decided to pursue their own careers in clinical research and medicine.
Chris Hayman joined the company in 2014, after 16 years with McDonald’s, and two years later became managing director, the first non-family board member, with Michael as semi-retired chair, where he remains.
Chris says: “Michael’s pretty much been in charge since he was a teenager, and we all respect that and understand the responsibility we have to take the business forward.
“One of our challenges is making sure he gets the right information at the right time, and assure him all the systems he put in place that made the business successful are still there.
“But he loves the detail, and that’s harder the further he moves away.
“It’s always interesting, and we feel we’ve done alright the last five years.”
Elena’s taste for the food business began with her maternal Italian grandfather’s ice cream parlour and further stints in the factory, shops and offices of her dad’s business.
She rejoined after completing a food science degree and graduate scheme with United Biscuits, in London.
She says: “Saturday’s in the shop, holidays in the factory.
“The ice cream parlour closed when I was ten, but we spent Saturdays there as children.
“I suppose my love of food was inevitable, as I was exposed to it on both sides of the family – ice cream on one side, pies and sausages on the other.
“What’s not to love as a kid?!”
Today, there are 34 shops, and plans are in place to reach as many as possible by the end of 2030, with each one bedecked in the company’s new design.
Mike has overseen the projects.
He says: “Everyone loves a shop-fit, don’t they?
“Everyone loves something new.
“The biggest benefit is that it is easier for the staff; more efficient and better functioning because a lot of them are very hard to work in.
“If they’re happier and serving with a smile on their faces, that can only help.”
The colours on the bags and wrappers may have changed, and the strapline too, but the food inside is as good as ever.
Mike says: “Nothing is fundamentally changing.
“We’re just showcasing what we do better, and that’s been part of the problem.
“People don’t shop like they used to; they don’t go to the butchers, the bakers and the candlestick maker.
“They can do it all under one roof.
“People aren’t coming in for meat anymore, so that display has to shrink.
“We’re trying to evolve with what we are and what we’ve become.
“But we’ve not lost our heritage, our recipe or our quality.
“We’re still the same, we’re just shifting with the times.
“We feed people. That’s our purpose and has been the crux of our business since it was founded.
“Back in the day, it was the miners and the shipbuilders.
“Obviously, jobs have changed, but our purpose and quality haven’t.”
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TEA
Items sold
1.5 million saveloys a year
1.5 million pots of pease pudding a year 26,600 mince pies a week
12,700 pork pies a week
Take-away time. Hot or cold, the most substantial meal of the day, is here.
Irwin Dickson pulled his red curtain across the shopfront after his lunchtime rush, but the 2020s’ all-day service – still the good, affordable meals Irwin provided – are very much part of Dicksons’ future.
The factory is a labyrinth of white walls, wellington boots, vats of raw meat, vegetables, spices and endless trays of pastry, waiting to be turned into Dicksons’ daily delights.
It’s a huge change from the time Michael watched his father at work in the butchers, but he loves every second down here – and staff who have been with the firm for decades clearly love to see him too.
He still knows all their kids’ names, and which football team they support, though it’s getting harder as their numbers increase.
Like many in the sector, Dicksons was hit by the surge in energy prices – even with the benefit of a long-term contract – and the latest Westminster Budget has presented new challenges.
In the offices upstairs, Chris says: “We want new customers to try us, and we want the staff and the customers to come on a journey with us and spread the message that we can make your day with good food.
“We have a lot of staff who have been with us for a long time, and customers who’ve trusted us for generations; they’re up for it, they like what we’re doing.
“It’s a big and exciting challenge.
“We’ve taken our time to get the rebrand right.” Mike says: “The hard bit starts now.
“It’s about explaining that the store gives a sense of what and who we are; our character, our company and warm, quality food.
“We’re not fancy, but we do things well and we do them right.”
Elena adds: “I don’t think we should ever underestimate how well we’ve done, through some really difficult and turbulent times.
“We’ve survived, so we must be doing something right.
“And we can improve.”
March 15, 2025
- Interview