The Target Newspaper, November 2001

SAUSAGES GO ONLINE.

A LOCAL company has gone on the internet to boost its sale of sausages.
Butcher Ian Cocking came up with the idea of launching his sausages online over a year ago when he noticed regular visitors to Tealby were phoning him to request special deliveries from as far a field as Scotland and London where they are fast becoming a highlight of stylish supper parties.
"Tealby sausages have built up quite a reputation," says Ian. Prince Philip is rumoured to have called them "the best damn dogs I ever tasted" when shooting on Lord Yarborough's land a few years ago. "I don't know how true that is," smiles Ian, "but they are certainly one of the most popular choices on both of the Tealby pubs' menus and a staple of the Tealby Summer Fete, because they're good honest fayre. Customers have been calling-in on Leanings for their sausages for years now, so I wanted those from further afield to enjoy them, which is why I thought of a web site."
With the help of friends from City Graphics design studio in a converted chapel in Tealby and Mike Powell, a freelance broadsheet photographer who also lives in the village, the web site became a reality and a link between the 19th and 21st centuries. It gives a flavour of life in the country and the chance to shop in a tiny, completely traditional village butchers with a promise of hands-on quality, freshness and next day delivery in special chilled packaging.
The shop, B. Leaning and Sons is situated at 26 Front Street Tealby right next to the Viking Way, the ancient footpath from the Humber to the Wash, so 'Viking Sausages' was an obvious choice of name for the web site. The shop itself is one of the oldest butchers in the country dating back to the 1860s when the secret sausage recipe was first developed.
Sausages are made daily on the premises with high quality, local ingredients of pork, bread, sage and seasoning; they are a distinctively traditional food, the recipe having remained the same over the years. "My homemade sausages are for customers who know what Lincolnshire sausages ought to be like," says Ian. "They contain no artificial ingredients and are 100% free from additives."
Ian started work as a butcher in July 1969 when he was 17, the same day man landed on the moon. For the first few years Ian worked alongside Walter Leaning, the last of the original family in the butchers shop business and chatted with him often about practices and routines of old. When Walter retired, it was left to Ian and his father Phil to continue running the shop.
In the early days much of the time was spent doing the rounds of the Lincolnshire Wolds but by the mid 1970's fuel price increases, changing lifestyles and new customers necessitated a change of approach.
Today, Ian spends most of his time in the shop and people come from miles around to stock up on bangers. In recent years the village shop and post office have closed so Leanings is now the only open shop door in Tealby.
The Viking sausage web site is a way of reaching out to potential customers a little further afield through mail order, and encourage more visitors to the shop. "I'm always happy to open specially for group outings and to give demonstrations." says Ian, explaining that the site is his attempt to embrace new technology and fight against the demise of the village shop. "With a little help from my friends in the village and the support of the wider community, I hope to ensure that Leanings will be around for the next 140 years."