“We’re seeing evidence of notice from suppliers on price increases,” Barry says.

“There’s a big upward pressure on costs. A lot of extra costs would have been occurred with Covid and different types of things. I think the second half of the year is certainly going to see cost inflation coming through. We’ve seen advanced warnings of price increases coming through, there’s been some, not major, I do think it will become a big factor in the second half of the year.”

So far, overall food prices have been flat over the past 12 months, according to the Central Statistics Office but Mr Barry says that the coming prices increases will “vary widely” depending on the commodity in question.

“In some cases, it’s quite serious, other cases it’ll be modest. It’s very hard to put a number on it,” Barry adds.

With some products, such as cooking oil and sunflower oil, there are “quite large” price increases coming through, he said, although the impact “could be short-term”.

“And some wines, I think in New Zealand there is a big scarcity of wine, so you are going to see some products spiking quite high.”

Barry also highlights the impact natural disasters, in particular fires, are having.

“When you see the amount of natural disasters at the minute, fires, if those fires are in the wrong place they could wipe out crops. It’s very hard to know for sure, but there will certainly be [price] increases. It’s hard to put an exact number [on it], but I think it could be serious enough over a 12-month period,” Barry says.

Founded in 1955, the Barry Group is a second-generation family business that supplies its franchise customer base which is made up of the Costcutter, Carry Out Off Licence and Quik Pick retail groups. It also supplies a large number of independent retailers and wholesalers based in Ireland and abroad. Among its corporate customers are Woodie’s DIY and Primark.

The company, which employs 240 people, has a turnover of around €270m per year.

Just last month the firm’s founder – Jim’s father – James Barry, passed away. Jim took over from his father as managing director in 1980, as in any family business the personal and the commercial are deeply entwined and its not for everyone.

“Different situations can happen, you have different careers, people might be in the business, they might want to go and do something else. Is there an exact science, I’m not sure,” he says.

Two of Mr Barry’s daughters – Holly and Amy – work for the company.

“I’d be hoping that will give them really good experience and understanding, most likely they will both work in other parts of the business over the next couple of years to give as broad an experience as you can.”

“As a dad, you want them to have as much understanding as possible, then you’re their boss, which can be difficult, and I think you’re continually working it out.”

Barry is involved in the Family Business Network, which provides help as well as advocacy for Ireland’s family-run businesses.

“You have certain ideas and help from being part of some of their workshops,” he says.

A sports enthusiast, who played rugby in his younger days, Mr Barry has
seen a lot in his time, none more so than in the past two years with two massive shocks from both Covid-19 and Brexit.

 

“Brexit has made it quite difficult to import and export,” Barry says.

The second half of the firm’s fiscal 2021 year began this month and the company is hoping that “it will become easier to operate in a Brexit environment. But it has been difficult, a lot of red tape.”

One of the main challenges with Brexit concerns the increase in paperwork, in particular, some companies in the UK that the group deals with “don’t have the paperwork actively available”.

The amount of time that is going into getting the paperwork right is “enormous and costly”, he adds. 

New rules that have brought in tariffs on some goods where previously there were none have made things worse which “does cause a big complication, so the country of origin gets really important.”

“It just brings in an awful lot more complexity and an awful lot more red tape.”

Overall the business is “trading well” despite what Mr Barry noted was a “very unusual” year.

The first few months of the Covid pandemic was like “having your peak sales every week for 12-14 weeks in a row.”.

“Some elements of our business were very, very strong, others were impacted by Covid. Our off-licence business performed way beyond our expectations, obviously, with pubs closed, and the whole hospitality impacted,” Mr Barry said.

There was a “mixed” performance from the Costcutter business. Some shops did “very well” while others including forecourts and city center stores were hit harder.

“On an overall basis, our Costcutter business held its own, so we were happy with that. But any of our business that would have been in hospitality – we would supply wholesalers, who sell to hospitality – that was impacted, our business to Primark was impacted… but on an overall basis we grew our business last year and we were actually quite happy how it turned out at the end of the year,” Mr Barry noted.

So far this year is performing “better than 2020”.

The company has its own logistics, and while there are currently shortages of truck drivers and warehouse employees, according to Barry, the business is “not hugely impacted on those two challenges because we’re in a town rather than a city” where there is less competition for workers.

“We would have a good regular source of employees in Mallow, where we live, so from a truck driver perspective and a warehouse perspective we have the required staff numbers.”

However, the company was not able to escape the shortage of haulage drivers in the UK that was caused by Brexit.

 

“It was quite difficult for a couple of weeks,” Barry explains.

“We believed that we operated probably better than our competitors because we had ample warehouse staff, we had our own truck drivers, we own our warehouse and our trucks. Something we have always believed is that we’re better off to be in control of the supply chain because haulers are very scarce and ultimately service has been impacted.”

Ensuring the smooth running of supply chains will be the “biggest challenge” for wholesalers in the coming year, he says.

“We actually think it will probably be one of our key strengths and we’re working hard on that.”

“If stock is not on the shelves of the shops it poses a pretty serious problem, there’s nobody carrying large quantities of stock any more and if you have supply chain impacted by a couple of days, especially on chill, you have a problem where you haven’t got stock on shelves so it’s something that’s very dear to our heart.”

The company is about to sign-off on a three-year strategic plan following a “reactionary” 2020.

The business, which has recently invested a lot in developing its management team, is aiming to increase its organic growth by a minimum of 10pc a year.

In addition, it is looking at potentially carrying out some acquisitions and adding businesses that it does not have.

“We think that consolidation will probably happen in the market and we believe we have ourselves placed really well for that. And on the other side, we’re deliberately keeping new ideas separate to that, we are looking at a few possibilities [of] doing something else, as part of diversific ation, we’d like to do something else apart from our core business.”

However, Mr Barry laughs and says that “something else” cannot be divulged.