Béres Sheffield: The fascinating history behind famous pork sandwich shop and what next after huge expansion

Béres today has 14 shops across the city, between them selling a million pork sandwiches a year and many other baked goods, including some 150,000 pork pies and the same number of sausage rolls. Those shops and its 5,000sqft factory on Rawson Spring Road, Hillsborough, a stone’s throw from Sheffield Wednesday’s stadium, between them employ 120 staff.

It all started when a Hungarian butcher’s son came to the UK as a political refugee after the 1956 uprising against the Stalinist government, which had taken possession of his father’s shops in Budapest.

Despite having no butchery experience himself, Sandor Béres – whose son Richard today runs the business with his sisters Catherine and Helen – took a job at a butcher’s in Rotherham and quickly learned the trade. Within a couple of years, he was confident he had what it took to go into business himself. He and his wife Eileen, who he’d met at a dance in Barnsley, took on a shop at Wadsley Bridge, with the story being that Sandor had been passing one matchday, saw the hordes of hungry Owls fans streaming past and decided it was the perfect location.

When did Béres start selling pork sandwiches?

Within the first week, they lost their biggest wholesale order but what could have been a killer blow turned out to be the making of the business. Left with a surplus of meat, Sandor, who Richard says was a ‘brilliant’ cook, started making and selling pork sandwiches – long before the days of Greggs, and sandwiches being big business – and they were soon flying off the shelves.

That first shop was pulled down so the road could be widened but they opened another on nearby Middlewood Road and a second branch on Penistone Road, where Hillsborough Leisure Centre is today – with Sandor working in one and Eileen in the other. Before Richard joined the business in 1988, they opened another shop on Bradfield Road but it was once he took over that the expansion really started.

"We knew we had a good product to sell, we just needed to modernise the processes,” said Richard. They opened the factory and started baking their own bread in 2000, and new shops soon followed in Crookes, Woodseats and Chapeltown. Béres opened its first city centre shop on Pinstone Street in 2015, and in 2018 it expanded into Crystal Peaks shopping centre, which is today its busiest shop. In 2021, amid the Covid pandemic, it opened two new shops, on Ecclesall Road and in Broomhill, bringing the total to 14.

How has cost-of-living crisis affected Béres pork sandwich shops?

There are no immediate plans to expand further, especially with the cost of living crisis pushing up the price of meat by 30 per cent, wages rising by 10 per cent, and its electricity bill set to treble. Richard describes it as the ‘perfect storm’ – worse than anything he or his father have faced before in Béres’ 62-year history – not helped by having to fork out £80,000 for two new low emission vans which meet the Clean Air Zone requirements.

While other businesses battle to survive, with many folding in the face of the huge financial pressure, Richard is confident Béres can weather the storm, helped by the fact it owns 80 percent of its properties. But for the first time since Richard starting working for the firm on Saturdays as a 13-year-old some 40 years ago, the business has had to put prices up twice in a year – despite taking a hit on its margins.

The business got a big boost in 2021 when Danny Malin who runs the hit Rate My Takeaway YouTube channel visited and gave it a rave review.

One thing Richard insists hasn’t changed is the size of the sandwiches, which are still made to the same specification his father perfected, with a generous portion of hot roast pork and plenty of dripping, stuffing and crackling.

For those who want it, Richard says, Béres is one of the few companies which can still offer a ‘job for life’, with two employees having worked there for 40 years and another who’s been there 30 years. The workforce includes Romanian, Bulgarian and Polish employees, alongside many from England, with Sandor always telling his son that if someone’s made the effort to come over ‘they’ve got something about them’. But Richard says Brexit will inevitably make it harder to recruit staff from the EU.

Where will Béres expand next and who might take over running family firm?

Richard has no plans to step down soon but whether he and his sisters will one day hand the business down to the next generation is unclear. His sons are keen, he explains, but they’re still at school, while one of his nephews is in his early 20s. Whatever happens, he says, they will find someone to take over running the firm when it is time.

Where the business might expand to next is also uncertain, with Richard keeping his cards close to his chest. Given the success of the Crystal Peaks branch, Meadowhall would be an obvious option, and there is already a Greggs there. As for opening a branch near to Bramall Lane, Richard says the Pinstone Street shop is already popular with Sheffield United fans on matchdays and there is nowhere obvious to open a branch closer to the ground that wouldn’t be too quiet when the Blades aren’t in action.

"I would say let’s see what the next generation does. My mates laugh at me because I’m always saying I think that’s it and within a week I’ve bought two more shops,” says Richard. “It has to be in the right location but when you find the right place you just get a feeling. I think I get that from my dad, who used to walk the streets and when he found the right place he would know straight away.”