A young farmer and entrepreneur has accused a Fife hotel of attempting to pass off beef burgers as his award-winning buffalo burgers.
Steven Mitchell, who has the largest herd of water buffalo in Scotland, confronted the proprietor of the Upper Largo Hotel after he was tipped off that it was falsely advertising Puddledub Buffalo burgers on its menu.
Steven made an undercover trip to the hotel to see for himself and when he ordered the “Puddledub Burger”, it confirmed to him that what was being sold had not come from his Puddledub Farm at Auchtertool, near Kirkcaldy.
But when contacted by The Courier, the Upper Largo Hotel insisted the incident had been a one-off “genuine mistake” and an apology had been made to Mr Mitchell.
However, Mr Mitchell went public on Facebook, stating: “I feel it is only fair to our customers and our genuine trade customers to let you know the details of what happened at the restaurant we visited.
“I received a phone call advising me that the Upper Largo Hotel was falsely advertising Puddledub Buffalo Burgers on their menu.
“I can only speak for the burger that I was served, which was categorically not a burger that we produce, despite specifically ordering this and being told that it was farmed in Auchtertool.
“I also ordered an Aberdeen Angus Burger, which appeared to be identical to the ‘Buffalo Burger’ that I was served.
“This sequence of events backed up exactly what I had been told would happen. I obviously questioned the manager and the proprietor and was told this was a one-off mistake and they were in the process of changing their menu.
Mr Mitchell added: “Following (the) events we have had further communication from the proprietor and they have provided various other explanations as they attempted to explain how they have continued to have our product on the menu, despite not ordering from us for some considerable time, including advising me that they purchased burgers from a shop that doesn’t even stock our burgers.
“Being sceptical I find it difficult to understand why they would claim to purchase our burgers at full retail price when they had ordered from us previously and at that time negotiated very hard for a trade discount.
“The Facebook response has been incredible… We work hard for our reputation and found this to be a really disappointing and uncomfortable situation.”
Margaret Voss, who has run the Upper Largo Hotel with her husband and chef Tony for 13 years, told The Courier there were Aberdeen Angus and Puddledub buffalo burgers on the menu and that both were in stock at the time.
However, she said the girl who took Mr Mitchell’s order had written down “B. Burger” and her husband mistook this for beef burger, not buffalo burger.
Mrs Voss claimed the false suggestion of a previous incident may have been fed to Mr Mitchell via a disgruntled former staff member.
She said the hotel prided itself on quality food. They had apologised to Mr Mitchell but did not want to become involved in a “bun fight”.
She added that buffalo burgers were not a good seller for them, stocks had been running down and the remaining stock had now been taken off the menu as they “wanted nothing more to do with them”.