Our story · 1955 – today
Seventy years, one street.
How a meat inspector's shop on Broughton Street became the name Edinburgh reaches for when it wants a proper sausage.
1955 · The founder
A meat inspector opens a shop.
Alex Crombie knew meat before he ever sold it. He had been a bacon curer and, for the City of Edinburgh, a meat inspector — the person whose job was to judge whether meat was good enough. In 1955 he opened his own butcher's shop on Broughton Street and started applying that same eye to everything he sold.
A year later he wrote down what the shop would stand for, in four words: quality, value, cleanliness and service. They have never been rewritten.
1961 · The second generation
Sandy takes the counter.
When Alex died in 1961, his son Sandy took over. Over the decade that followed he expanded the shop into the units alongside it — more counter, more cold room, more range — without ever loosening his father's standards.
It was Sandy who set Crombies on the road it is still known for: not just a good local butcher, but a specialist. Somewhere worth crossing the city for.
1985 · The sausage years
Scotland's best beef sausage.
Through the 1980s the shop leaned into what would become its signature — the gourmet sausage. In 1985 that reputation was made official: Crombies won Scotland's Best Butcher's Beef Sausage.
From there the range only grew. Best sellers, speciality, traditional and gluten-free — well over a hundred varieties, all linked by hand in the shop. It is why, to this day, people say Crombies when they mean a proper sausage.
Beef Sausage 1985
Today · The third generation
The same name over the door.
Crombies is now run by Sandy's son and daughter-in-law, trading from within The Broughton Market — a speciality grocery and food store on the same street the family has always worked. [Owners' first names — to confirm.]
The counter is staffed by butchers six days a week. The sausages are still made by hand. And the four words Alex wrote down in 1956 still decide what's good enough to sell.
- Award-winning butcher
- 100+ handcrafted sausages
- Family-run · 3 generations
