Weekly meeting with Speaker Ronnie Graham of Barony Country Foods

At the weekly meeting of the Rotary Club of Lockerbie and District held at the Sure Hotel, Lockerbie on Monday 27 November Past President Bryan Woods, introduced his guest Ronnie Graham as speaker. Ronnie is the Managing Director of Barony Country Foods and has just celebrated 25 years in business.

Ronnie stated, “I was brought up in Tiree with fish and on reaching secondary school age the family moved to Penicuik. I attended Penicuik High School and leaving school I fancied fish farming after seeing a program on T. V. As a consequence, I enrolled on a course at Barony College which was one of two Colleges that did a course at that time. On completing the course, I started off working at the Ae Valley Trout Farm where I met my wife, Heather. I then moved on to the fish farm at Holywood, Dumfries. After being made redundant at Holy wood I obtained a job at Pinney’s, curing and smoking salmon.”

“After a couple of years at Pinney’s, I thought I could do this for myself. Following some research, I looked around Scotland for a base eventually settling on Deeside as the best location for various reasons. At this time just by chance I happened to be speaking to David Rose who was the principal at the Barony College and I told him of my plans. About three days later I received a letter from David asking for me to come and see him at the Barony College. After going to the Barony and meeting with David and Russel Marchant I took on their teaching facility ‘Barony Country Foods’ a Limited Company of which I became the major shareholder.”

“Needless to say, it was hard work, with the mornings taken up with making up orders and the afternoons often into the evenings delivering all over the region. After about 3 years concentrating on the restaurant and hotel trade of the business, we realised we had to diversify by expanding our range of products. We did this by developing the fresh fish side and introducing a butchery.”

“In 2005 the Barony College was taken over and we received notice to quit so following negotiations we moved lock stock and barrel to Laverock Hall, Lochmaben. Initially we had one unit establishing a shop and over the years have gradually expanded, now occupying four units.”

“Having developed the business to about 85% wholesale we were hit by covid and almost overnight we had to change to 100% retail. My son and fellow director of the company Alisdair and I started to discuss various options. What we found however was an increase in people visiting the shop and also our home deliveries. We also found that customers were looking for more smoked produce. This resulted in us purchasing a new kiln for
smoking in order to facilitate a larger range and variety of smoked produce.”

“We also purchased the Company Lochengower a 100% online business for whom we used to supply produce. We incorporated this company into Barony Country Foods thereby allowing us to develop our online business. We have also received a Dumfries and Galloway Life producer award, along with various awards for smoked salmon, venison etc. Our efforts have been rewarded by the fact we now supply our products the length and
breadth of the U.K. In concluding I have to say that good advice for anyone going into business is to treat customers as you would yourself and you won’t go far wrong.”

On being called to give the vote of thanks Past President David Rothwell thanked Ronnie for a fascinating insight into the story of Barony Country foods following which those present showed their appreciation in the usual manner.