Summertime Musings

Speciality Bites with

Paul Hargreaves

Chief executive of Cotswold Fayre

• Becoming a B Corp
• Top trend predictions for Christmas 2021
• Self-sacrifice: The importance of building a leadership legacy centred on others
• Undercover Boss
• Can/should bosses really be close friends with their staff?

By the time you read this, I will hopefully be enjoying some Italian sunshine and food, washed down with a large glass of cool Pinot Grigio!

So what better time to let off some steam, particularly bearing in the mind the people who may recognise themselves may be away on holiday themselves, and might not read it.  Actually I am amazed quite how many people read my musings and rantings, so maybe I ought to be a little more careful in what I say, but maybe not, as they would become as dull as dishwater.

What better than to start with the weather.  At first I thought this summer’s weather wasn’t too bad, but then a couple of articles I read about how poor food sales had been this summer both made the point that we haven’t really had an extended period of weather long enough for people to plan a BBQ for the weekend, and it is those kind of events that pull through sales of many of the products found in our customer’s stores.  It has definitely not been a classic summer, but the colder summer has probably helped us smash our records for Christmas orders to go out later in the year.

Secondly, have you been watching the latest series of Dragon’s Den?  It should be renamed “Dragon’s Food Den” as at least one pitch and normally two per week are food businesses.  More than ever.  That says there is a lot of innovation in our sector, and many new brands coming through.  Too many I would say.  Just please can someone tell the candidates to grow their business to a less embarrassingly small size before they come on and try and gain an over-inflated value for it!

I know we have had the discussion about exclusivity of products to wholesalers or not before.  It can be the right way to go, but isn’t always.  However, if as a supplier, you have agreed exclusivity with a wholesaler, don’t go and sell the products to other wholesalers without talking to the original wholesaler about it.  That has happened to us and I know other wholesalers have also had it happen. It is simply rude, unethical and poor business practice and isn’t going to win you many friends. 

Finally I had to chuckle the other day when browsing through another wholesaler’s catalogue too see another of our brands in there that we knew earlier in the year they had decided to add into their range.  The strange thing was that, despite all their product codes being 4 or 5 digits, for this particular range they had actually used Cotswold Fayre’s product codes!?  Just odd – and slightly silly really, don’t you think? 

Anyway that Italian coastline is calling – see you at Speciality & Fine Food Fair in September.