Summertime is with us at last and, according to the Gershwin lyric, the living should be easy. Well, from a wholesaler's perspective you would at least expect a significant boost to your beer and wine sales as some hot holiday weather arrived.
But no, that has not been the experience for many wholesalers because the scourge of duty fraud has resurfaced in the last few weeks. Large stocks of beer (mostly) and some wines are coming onto the market at prices way below the best prices that legitimate wholesalers can achieve from the suppliers.
The fact is that these low prices can only be achieved as a result of some form of duty fraud having funded them. This has the obvious consequence that bona fide wholesalers lose business as their customers snap up the apparent bargains elsewhere.
The Federation of Wholesale Distributors acted immediately to both raise the issue with HM Revenue and Customs and to co-ordinate the trade against the perpetrators.
As this issue of ProWholesaler was going to press, these efforts were at their peak and we trust they will result in a favourable outcome.
Meanwhile an awesome line-up of top-notch speakers has been assembled for FWD's 20th anniversary Catersummit conference that takes place on October 20 and 21 at Cheltenham (see page 27 for more details).
The foodservice market is one of vital importance to the entire wholesaler community. Restaurants, cafés, work canteens and a myriad of other food outlets provide one in six of the meals we eat and on average capture 27% of consumer food expenditure. FWD members' share of this equated last year to a massive £6.3bn for specialist delivered foodservice operators, and an increasingly important £2.2bn through the cash and carry channel.
This year's theme for Catersummit is "Tougher times - But there never was a free lunch". This encapsulates the reality that the catering marketplace can expect a challenging time as the credit crunch bites and commodity and energy price hikes feed down to the consumer. But fast-moving wholesalers, suppliers and operators have proved that they can survive the ups and downs of the market in the past, and some will thrive by adapting to difficult circumstances more readily than others. The debate that will take place between wholesalers, suppliers and caterers on October 21 looks set to be a riveting one - I urge you not to miss it.
Will Government proposals to ban the display of tobacco in retail premises damage the wholesale sector?
