In a wee car park in Dunkeld, chef Orkun Cevik spends 95 hours a week making burgers and serving customers solo at The Craft Diner.
He works six and a half days at the craft burger shack, and even when he’s not serving food, he’s still working.
The venue is a small, dark green shack, tucked away behind the loos in the Atholl Street Car Park in the Perthshire village of Dunkeld.
There, Orkun works away entirely on his own, hand crafting more than a hundred burgers a day, he says.
“Even on Tuesdays when I’m off, if you should see the top of my dining table, you would get lost in it,” he says.
“Invoices, emails, things I need to do, people I need to call.
“When you work so hard like that, and then you get reviewed like this, you sit down and say, I don’t deserve that.”
After reviews online which Orkun branded his burgers “greasy”, he is speaking out against people who leave hateful comments and reviews online, especially during the festive period.
And though he seems tough as nails it still gets under his skin when people criticise his hand-crafted burgers.
“I am trying to be the best one,” says 48-year-old Orkun.
“I don’t want to be the good one, I don’t want to be okay one, I don’t want to be alright one, I don’t really want to be a lovely one.
“What I want is to be the best one. That’s why I work so hard.”
‘I’m not a saint, I’m a chef – we all make mistakes’
“But,” Orkun argues, “it’s not just at this time of year, people should comment like this period.”
While bad reviews online during the lead up to Christmas are especially damaging to businesses, Orkun says that they shouldn’t happen at any point.
“Social media showed us how so many people on earth are cowardly,” he adds.
“You had a burger in my place and you had a problem with it? Call me.
“If you want me to succeed, tell me and I can fix the issue.
“I will say come over, your burger is on the house, let me fix it for you and we can come up with another idea. I will thank them for the feedback.
“Because in the end, I am not a saint, I’m a chef. We all make mistakes.
“I consecutively cook 8-10 hours a day on my own. A burger may go out a degree wrong.
“When I serve people, my first question is always, ‘how is the meal’?”
Orkun published a video on The Craft Diner’s Instagram page, urging those leaving bad reviews to reconsider.
“But if you go home, go online, you are creating a different problem,” he adds.
“If you are a genuine person, we will handle it as adults.
“If you put a comment online like that, it is vengeance. It is so wrong.”
Orkun has also been subject to racial abuse at his burger spot in the past.
The Craft Diner chef’s plea on behalf of hospitality during festive season
In hospitality, says Orkun, staff work as hard as they can, despite illness, injury or exhaustion.
“Believe me, if you ever hear the stories, you will sit down and cry,” he says.
“For example, a few years ago around Christmastime, I burned my right hand so bad.
“It was Friday night and I couldn’t go home because people were waiting out there for their burgers. I had my right hand in the cold water and the left one out cooking.
“The pain wouldn’t go away. But the next morning I woke up, rubbed my hand and I went back to work again.”
Eventually the burn became infected and his wife convinced Orkun to take time off.
“That pain that you go through,” he says, “some people don’t understand that.
“I’m hoping that this conversation will help people to respect hospitality.
“It breaks my heart.”
Conversation