Locks finally closed

Another restaurant has gone into liquidation, this time Locks Restaurant in Portobello. Locks was an istitution back in the days when you could go on a long boozy lunch, ring the secretary that you were out for the afternoon and then drive home, half drunk. Similar behaviour nowadays and you would find yourself arrested for drunk driving and then fired the next day.

Kelvin Rynhardt and his wife Teresa took it a little over two years ago, spent way too much doing the place up and then tried to sell over-priced food to a non-existent market, just as the economy ent into meltdown. Two years on and we went to a creditors meeting yesterday, to be told by the examiner taht the company has gone into liquidation.

There is the usual, predictable, sad trail of destruction in its wake. Revenue, suppliers, the landlord, even the staff are owed large amounts of money. Kelvin and Teresa have lost a lot of money as well, but there are a lot of questions that will remain unanswered - the main one being: where did all the money go? There was a lot of wine sold, presumably food to go with it, but nobody was getting paid...strange?

For our own part, our bad debt represented about two months sales. If you stop supplying completely, you will never get paid, so we went on COD and tried to get the old debt down, but didn't get it down quickly enough. Lesson learned.

In the end, it is better to close it down as it was a business going nowhere.

Move on.