78 DEBATE
Lindsay Campbell
Clearly, food inflation for us is huge. If you take eggs they have increased 28 per cent in a year, sugar 48 per cent, pasta 28 per cent. It is massive and not in our control.
We’ve got low consumer confidence at the moment because people aren’t sure what’s coming. We can’t influence that. Post-Covid we had to adapt and we had to change our business model. We got through that and you know what, we’ll get through this too,
But we’ll have to adapt. We’ll have to be innovative and creative around things like menus and our offer and our pricing and all those things. It’s not easy. It’s tight, but good operators will get through. You have to reflect
on everything, almost on a weekly basis. For a lot of our big events we are looking at different dishes that traditionally we wouldn’t have worked with.
We have to be creative because the market won’t bear what we would need to charge, given an acute labour shortage on top of that. We also have to be more thoughtful about rostering, how we deploy and work with our teams. There are always opportunities. I’m never pessimistic about that. The market moves quickly, tastes change. We are always looking for trends, we have a lot of young people working for us and we spend a lot of time asking them.
Paul Williams
Our chocolate is grown in Columbia. We got an email one Friday afternoon at four o’clock; it was literally ‘Your chocolate is going up in price by 20 per cent.’ End of. That’s not the expensive stuff. Packaging, especially outer boxes, has gone up 50-75 per cent.
It is horrendous but that outer packaging is what sells the product, it draws people in. You can only put your price up to a point, then you become too expensive. We’ve changed the business. We have stopped doing all outside events. We still have our shop, which is probably 70 per cent of turnover. We have online and wholesale as well. At the moment our struggle is footfall.
We are in a beautiful rural place where there are 32 different businesses and there’s only so much money that people have. More people are going out for food so there’s less money to spend on other things. People want a customer experience. It is not just about going into a shop to buy something. It’s get them in the shop, do something with them and then get them to buy. If you look at VAT, which is a huge amount which you pay all the time, in the UK it’s 20 per cent. If you go into Europe, it’s five per cent. It’s a big difference.
Suzi Wynne
We work with several food and drink clients. In the last 18 months it has been a really tough environment. We’ve seen inflation in food costs, energy costs, packaging costs; logistics as well. None are coming down.
There are opportunities out there but what we’ve been doing for our clients is passing on price increases. There is obviously a ceiling, there is a limit. We certainly see, in terms of consumer trends, a real polarisation of people looking at the value end. Some research this week said any food that requires an oven to go on has dropped - 3 per cent. People are looking at other methods of cooking, that’s obviously a trend.
There has been that huge growth of the value end of the market where every single supermarket has rebranded
its basics range. The government even got involved to try and put a price cap on basic food. It doesn’t seem to have affected the other end because if people have money, they have money.
It’s about my clients looking to elevate their brands to capture more of the premium market, because that is pretty robust in these times. The growth of restaurant quality products at home is huge. I wouldn’t underestimate that.
Andrew Leeming
In terms of business support, we’re not here to fix businesses, we’re here to support businesses and that’s a very different conversation.
We’ve been clear through Boost and the Growth Hub that it starts with a conversation. It starts with where the business is at. What are their challenges, their issues? What are they doing as a consequence of some of these challenges and where are they finding barriers they can’t knock down and need to bring in external help and support?
One of the roles of the Growth Hub is to illuminate and highlight where that external support exists for businesses. Business is tough and it always has been.
It’s lonely in businesses. You need to network more, get out there, start conversations. We need to highlight and spotlight best practice.
People don’t start businesses because they’re good business owners or leaders. They do it because they’ve got a passion for something. Everything else is learning. We all need to get better at celebrating not only our wins but everyone else’s. We need to create a much more celebratory environment across Lancashire. Work together. We talk about collaboration a lot but, actually, most people default to competition. If you ask for help, the person you’re asking will probably want to help you, without a doubt.
Neil Bullows I’ve been in the hospitality industry for some 30 years and it is an absolute nightmare out there.
The Whitehall Hotel is the oldest hotel in Blackburn with Darwen and I’ve been there 20 years. I’ve seen the recessions, the challenges, as everybody has. But to my mind, this is a really challenging time across the board. It is a storm on all fronts. The hotel is primarily a wedding and events venue. You see a lot of summer wedding fairs at some beautiful venues at the moment. Historically, that never would have happened.
We had our first fair two weeks ago. Every one I’ve done over the past 20 years, we’ve always booked one if not two weddings. That has not happened this time. Accommodation is dying. One prized venue in Lancashire had four rooms occupied last night out of a stock of considerably more. That’s frightening. We need government support. We need
help. We need to do something drastically. The industry is on a precipice for a lot of businesses and it’s a shame.
I’ve always been resilient but there comes a point where you think
enough is enough, I need help. During lockdown we had to pivot and we went into the gin market and it was embraced by the area. We’ve got various other avenues but all that’s doing is just keeping us afloat.
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