Meet the mates who bonded over meat.
It’s just after dawn in Canowindra. Street lamps faintly light Gaskill Street as the sky shifts from indigo to pink. There is little movement beyond the rumble of trucks taking the heavy-vehicle bypass around the historic main street.
As local café and retail owners arrive for the day, Max Benaud, head butcher at Canowindra Butchery, has already been working for several hours. Eleven kilometres away, his friend and co-owner Wallace Stranger is beginning his day on Minoru, his family’s third-generation sheep and cropping property.
Wal and Max are two friends who found common ground over how meat should be bought and sold. Neither planned to run a butcher shop or build a paddock-to-plate lamb brand. But when the chance came to do both, while saving Canowindra’s only butcher shop, they took it.
“I always say to people I’m the meat nerd and Wal is the livestock nerd,” Max says.
The pair met in 2019 while working in export sales at NH Foods in Sydney. They began talking about an e-commerce meat business that would sell directly to consumers and cut out the middleman.
In 2023, Wal approached Canowindra’s local butcher about using the shop’s cold storage and cutting facilities on the days it was closed.
“I just thought Max and I could lease the space off him to play around with meat packs,” Wal says. “Turns out the owner was keen to sell the place.”
They bought the shop in January 2024, renovated it and opened that April.
Two months later, Max was diagnosed with B-cell acute lymphoma. Chemotherapy meant a month in Orange Hospital followed by week-on, week-off treatments. With his immune system compromised, he could no longer serve customers.
"When I was back home in between treatments, I would often go into the store at five in the morning before anyone was there and prep all the meat for the day, then walk out the door before we’d open to customers.”
With help from their staff, the friends kept the shop running. The Canowindra community rallied around them, dropping meals into the store and offering support.
Just over two years on, Max is in remission and Canowindra Butchery is thriving. Three more staff have joined, e-commerce has launched, and Wal has stepped back from day-to-day shop work to focus on growing Minoru Lamb.
Alongside their own lamb brand, the shop sells products from other Central West producers, including Watervale Beef and Blakeney Pork. The pair have ambitions to deliver Australia-wide by 2030.
For all their plans to grow, the business remains firmly rooted in Canowindra.
"Like any town, all it takes is one good café, one good butcher, one good pub and the place starts to get a bit of character and buzz about it,” Wal says.
Read the full story in Issue 01 of The Burton, available in RB Sellars stores and with every purchase online.
Find out more about Canowindra Butchery and Minoru Lamb at canowindrabutchery.com or follow @canowindrabutchery on Instagram or
Facebook.
The Burton
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From Steel
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A Cut Above
Meet the mates who bonded over meat, and saved their local butcher shop.
Of Salt And Sky
Rare floods transform Lake Eyre into an inland sea, revealing the beauty of Australia’s interior.
Bleeding Blue
A county rugby club fights for a home premiership with a town behind it.
All Hands On Deck
Long days, breakdowns and big machinery as as harvest gets underway in Central Queensland.
The Long Thread
After 200 years of wool growing, Victoria’s Mount Hesse Station is adapting for a changing future.
Whatever It Takes
Life on a vast Northern Territory cattle station where no challenge is ever small.
Look Westward
Amid ambition and setbacks, is cotton reshaping the future of Western Australia’s Ord Valley?
A Cut Above
Meet the mates who bonded over meat, and saved their local butcher shop.
Bleeding Blue
A county rugby club fights for a home premiership with a town behind it.
The Long Thread
After 200 years of wool growing, Victoria’s Mount Hesse Station is adapting for a changing future.
From Steel
Horses, family and a life on the land inspire a rural sculptor turning discarded steel into art.
Of Salt And Sky
Rare floods transform Lake Eyre into an inland sea, revealing the beauty of Australia’s interior.
All Hands On Deck
Long days, breakdowns and big machinery as as harvest gets underway in Central Queensland.
Whatever It Takes
Life on a vast Northern Territory cattle station where no challenge is ever small.
