The day The Grocer met Simon Hannah was ‘Blue Monday’, when people’s outlook is supposedly at its gloomiest. And it prompted the CEO of JW Filshill, Scotland’s oldest independent wholesaler, to recall a conversation he had when taking over the business from his father in 2011.

For the keys to the kingdom came with a disclaimer. “I remember my dad saying to me on the last day: ‘Learning how the business works is one thing, but the most important thing is learning the people – understanding who they are, who their families are, their goals and the stuff they’re interested in.’”