Our story

From humble beginnings

Opening in 1928 originally as a butcher shop by Thomas Handyside Macdonald who sons Thomas and Graham ran the shop while Thomas Snr and son David ran their Mortdale shop. Thomas Snr migrated from Scotland in 1925. The delivery method around Oatley was then a horse and cart.

It is quite ironic that Thomas Macdonald Snr had a Thomas Macdonald Jnr running the shop as these days Ray Wood Jnr purchased the shop from his father Ray Wood Snr in May 2012 and changed the name from Oatley Village Butchery to Jumbuck Meats Gourmet Butchery.

Ray Snr has been in the meat industry for over 40 years, doing his apprenticeship in Bondi in 1964 and then opening his first shop in Toukley in 1969 and going on to own and build up many successful retail shops throughout Sydney.

Ray Jnr on the other hand completed a Bachelor of Commerce at the University of Wollongong in Marketing and Finance. After working for the Attorney General’s Department for three years, he then started his own business delivering meat to restaurants and clubs using the rear of his fathers shop at Panania.

Three years on building up the wholesale business, he purchased the shop at Oatley and was proud to name it after his fathers business, Jumbuck Meats, calling it Jumbuck Meats Gourmet Butchery.

Ray Jnr has grown the business substantially, winning many awards with the biggest and most recent being awarded Best Butchery at the Australian Small Business Champion awards in 2020.

Growing the business

Since opening the Oatley store in 2012, the business has gone on to achieve more than first expected.

In 2013, we won our first St George Small Business Award in the Meat/Fish/Poultry category and have since gone on to win this award a total of eight times in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021. A record of seven in a row for a small business.

In 2018, we won the major Awards of Best Small Business in the St George area and have won The Australian Small Business Awards in the Best Butchery category in 2020 after being finalists in previous years.

We have had our owner, Ray nominated as a finalist multiple times in the Outstanding Business Person category and also had other staff represent the business in other award categories such as the Outstanding Youth Award for best young worker. The Outstanding Youth Award was won in 2020 by the Oatley Manager, Jayden Bitz.

We do home deliveries three days per week, have a large social media following and a loyal customer base. We are very proud to say that we also make everything in store ourselves (other than small goods) and have a product range of over 200 items now rotated seasonally and on demand.

We also serve clubs and restaurants with their portioned cut and prepared meats and do many meat trays for Clubs and RSL’s. Since continuing to grow, we are pleased to support many charities, schools and local community groups. Please contact us for any enquiries you may have as we value supporting our local community organisations.