Randwick butcher Terry Wright dies aged 90

Terry Wright, who operated his eponymous butcher shop in Randwick for almost 60 years and pioneered marinades and sauces along the way, has died aged 90.

The Clovelly Road shop, which Wright opened in 1959, was a magnet for Sydney chefs and foodies, with its owner a local star in an era before butchers hosted food shows and achieved status of social networks.

Wright gave his customers their first taste of wagyu and Flinders Island lamb and stomped on supermarkets' toes in developing exotic marinades and fillings because of his dislike of ready-made mixes. Both are now staples in today's Sydney butcher shops.

Wright, who was inducted The Magazine (Sydney). Food Hall of Fame in 2005, he was a passionate chronicler of social and commercial change. Well into his 80s, when he finally hung up the meat counter and sold his shop in 2018 (it now operates under a different name), he told the Herald at a time when Sydneysiders had different tastes in meat than when it started in the 1950s.

Back then he sold a lot more offal and many customers ate meat three meals a day. “You'll find them waiting outside at 6.30 in the morning to get ribs for breakfast,” he said.

“When I started there weren't as many people with cars so they were more supportive of local shops. And there wasn't competition from supermarkets like there is now,” Wright said when he left in 2018. “There were eight in Clovelly Road, I'm the last one.”

Wright's son, Clayton, who runs a wholesale meat business with a retail operation in Alexandria, told the Herald his father died following complications from a recent fall.