Island Life Magazine Ltd August/September 2008 | Page 62

life

INTERVIEW

Cutting it at
the top of his
game
Roz Whistance meets the twinkly
gaze of Andy Gustar, butcher,
businessman and band leader

Those intensely blue eyes are
twinkly but steely. His face,
though quick to break into a
boyish grin, is earnest. What
you get when talking to Andy
Gustar is a huge sense of
integrity.
Andy is a Rotarian, the leader
of a youth band, and father
of five. Oh, and he’s the man
behind Hamilton’s Fine Foods,
the largest producer of Island
food. “Sustain” is his most
frequently used word – though
not just about his business.
He wants children’s interest in
music to be sustained: he wants
discipline in education to be
sustained, and he wants local
businesses to be sustained in

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the face of the supermarkets.
Andy has only been at the
helm of Hamilton’s for the
past 14 years, but its rise to
ubiquity – his products are in
the Co-op now and are served
in Island schools – is down
to his dogged determination
to maintain standards. He hit
the headlines a year ago over
a bust-up with the Farmer’s
Market in Newport. Although
he had been at the forefront of
the movement, working on the
Farmers’ Market committee
from day one, some felt that
as he wasn’t a farmer he didn’t
have a place there. Andy left,
“agreeing to disagree” and
started the Vectis Food and

Craft Market which runs
alongside the Farmers’ Market.
But despite the acrimony he
still wishes the farmers well: “It
is the supermarkets we have to
fight, not each other. But some
of the farmers saw me as the
competition.”
Had Andy been able to
guarantee that his products
only contained Isle of Wight
meat, there wouldn’t have
been a problem. “If there isn’t
enough Island pork I have to
use Hampshire pork. It’s not
being unfair, it’s being honest
about how to make the business
sustainable.”
He had, he says an idyllic
childhood. Andy was born of

a master mariner, and brought
up in Newport. The youngest
of four, he had space, fields,
a river to row and time to
think, to plan and to dream.
“I didn’t have television till I
was about 14. If you make your
own entertainment you’re more
inventive. A lot of that’s been
lost.”
He fell into butchery quite by
chance, through a Saturday job:
“It was hard work, up early,
on a bike delivering meat in all
weathers. But you learnt the
importance of your rapport
with the customer.”
At 18 he went to work
in Shanklin – which, after
Newport, was a huge culture

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