A popular Paisley catering company has been forced to relocate after the property was put up for auction without the knowledge of the tenants.
Staff at Scott McGinlay Catering, which traded on Causeyside Street, say they were stunned to learn from neighbours that the shop was in an online auction.
The company was established in 2006 and grew to have five locations across the area, including the award-winning Paisley Pie Co.
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A post on social media read: "Recently, our good neighbours next door at Kenneth Edwards Hair made us aware that our shop was listed online for auction.
"This was a complete shock – we had no warning, no conversation and, most disappointingly, we weren’t given first refusal to buy the property despite being long-standing and reliable tenants.
“When we contacted the auction company, we were told that if we wanted to stop the sale, we would need to pay £80,000 with funds cleared in just seven days.
“This came at a time when we had just spent thousands renovating the shop in August, believing in our future there.
“Our five-year lease had ended last month but, because we always had a positive relationship with the agents, we assumed a renewal would be straightforward and coming our way.”
“To make matters even harder, the way the auction was advertised, [it] presented our shop as an “investment opportunity”, highlighting the chance to buy a property and immediately let it out to Scott McGinlay Catering [which we in fact hoped would be the case and we wouldn’t need to move out].
“Sadly, that wasn’t the case when the new owner appeared.
"They were well within their rights to want the shop for their own business interests, and we have been asked to vacate with immediate effect.”
All operations will now be run from Unit 11 in the Mossedge Industrial Estate, Linwood – with a longer-term view of finding a new location somewhere else.
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