Maltby Man Gives Up On Business After Whelk Stall Flop
2016-11-23
A Maltby man has finally given up on any hope of running his own successful business after his whelk stall went into voluntary liquidation. A whelk stall is colloquially seen as the smallest and simplest of commercial enterprises to run, and so the insult “He couldn’t run a whelk stall”, is often used to denote the highest degree of incompetence. But as Tony Trotter from Morrell Street discovered to his cost, selling the large snail-like gastropod, and making a profit, isn’t as easy as it looks.
“Let’s face it,” he told us while trying to tempt a pair of teenagers who were trying to avoid getting downwind of his stall, “Who in their right mind is going to eat stuff that’s come out of the sea when they can go to the chippie? It’s like eating rubber bands soaked in vinegar. And maintaining a coherent pricing strategy while taking into account fluctuating exchange rate factors is a nightmare.”
Single Tony says the business has taken a toll on both his finances and his personal life. “Not only have I made no money” he told us “but I can’t get a bird. They get one whiff of my winkles and you don’t see them for dust.”
This isn’t the first time Tony has fallen foul of a popular colloquialism. Just two years ago, he attempted to run a piss up in a brewery, only to find that they had virtually no finished product on site and the event would have been more successfully held in the regional distribution depot.
