Scottish Field

A DAY LATE AND A DOLLAR SHORT

Guy Grieve wonders what a small business needs to do to get paid

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Afew gripes, my dear friends. Allow me to offload. We have been working ourselves to death making sure that chefs throughout the country have been able to get our immaculate dived scallops into their kitchens on time and ready for service. Long days, often starting at dawn and ending with the moon up, have been our routine. Co-ordinating with fishers and ferry timetables, and then working hard to ensure our logistics are spot on.

Our scallops, once in the kitchens, are then prepped and sold on the day or shortly afterwards and the restaurant and hotel owners make their margin fast. However, we often only get paid up to 60 days later. The result is that our microscopi­c company is actually forced into providing credit for some pretty sizeable concerns. Our turnover is deprived of vital oxygen of cash-flow. And our morale is severely dented; what is the point in working for nothing?

If one asks for payment on delivery, more often than not, the restaurant finds another supplier. At the time of writing we are owed thousands. It’s deeply frustratin­g and, I’ve discovered, not at all uncommon within the hospitalit­y industry in this country. The effect that this has is to weaken the homegrown Scottish supply sector and to favour multinatio­nal concerns.

For years this shoddy state of affairs has impoverish­ed the supply sector in Scotland. Government needs to step in to sort the mess out. And a good example of how to deal with it can be seen in – yes, you guessed it – Germany, a country filled to the brim with many successful family-owned small businesses. According to German law a payment is always due immediatel­y if the parties have not agreed specific deviating payment terms. Any payment of over 30 days is deemed unacceptab­le, and payment terms of less than 30 days can also be regarded as unacceptab­le if it imposes an unreasonab­le disadvanta­ge. Over term bills are passed to the tax authoritie­s, paid in full to the supplier then charges added to the offending parties. This ensures that in Germany SMEs can truly prosper and actually generate wealth and prosperity, whereas here in Scotland we are eternally shafted by appalling payment rates and kept on the financial edge, which is hardly conducive to creating an environmen­t that is positive and optimistic.

To add salt to the wounds I have also had to bite my lip and not go on a massive public rant about a couple of restaurant­s that are actually claiming to be using our

100% guaranteed dived scallops on their menus, even though they’ve never bought from us. Profession­al discretion stops me from naming these offenders but it is galling in the extreme to know that their diners will happily be paying extra from a ‘dived’ scallop when in reality they’re swallowing a dredged one with all of the associated environmen­tal issues attached.

Lying to people about what they eat is one of the most base cons I can think of and cynical in the extreme. Innocent and trusting diners, quite literally, find themselves swallowing lies.

There’s a lovely character in Oban who used to run a pearl of a seafood restaurant. One night a diner asked him; ‘Excuse me, are these scallops hand-dived?’ He drew himself up to his full height and in his rich throaty voice replied;

‘Of course not! Every single scallop on your plates was dredged up using a spring-loaded Newhaven scallop dredge!’

Whatever your opinions on his communicat­ions ability, the fact is this – I love that reply. It’s honest and straightfo­rward. I’d rather that any day when compared to the suave little so-and-so’s who may talk sweetly, put all the nice bits on their menus and social media but in reality often leave their suppliers unpaid or, worse still, lie about their food’s provenance.

If one asks for payment on delivery, the restaurant finds another supplier

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