Walking into restaurants looking for mussels??? And Karen didn't even find it unusual, she though they should have looked for a manager. Why on earth would a restaurant sell you all their mussels when they could sell individual portions with massive mark up.

As for snails, even if out of season surely a Carrefour may have had frozen snails??

Must be markets and supermarkets in the coastal towns on both side of the channel, was surprised they started hacking around restaurants instead of looking in the obvious places.

Supermarkets are probably ruled out by the need to negotiate on price, if not the logistics of filming with a camera crew and half a dozen candidates.

Though as the businesswoman on You're Fired pointed out, the way they negotiate is unrealistic if you ever intend to go back. You can't have repeat business if your supplier has gone bust through knocking out gear below cost price because your chien est mort.

It should have beenthe first item on their lists. Early morning start. By the time they started looking for them it was far too late in the day.

It was surely the easiest item to procure?

Mussels? Yeah try a couple of Fishmongers first thing then move on to the trickier items, minimum of effort.

I didn't quite get why Karen made such a big deal about them not asking to see the restaurant manager? Why is restaurant going to sell them their ingredients for the day and even if they did they are not going to sell them at a discount?

Its almost as though they realised post boardroom that the firing of Jenny seemed ill-judged and they had to manufacture a seemingly trivial incident into a poor business mistake?

As somebody else said though this is mainly organisational rather than negotiating task, as my recollection is that its nearly always failing to acquire items rather than getting a fiver knocked off something worth £30 that will lose you the task.

Essentially if you managed to source all the items and just paid the asking price, you'd probably win the task more often than not.

Buying the dinghy for £240 more than the other team would've cost the team far more than the fine for missing out on the mussels.
Yes, any large supermarket will have them but if the 'you must knock the price down' rule was in play that would explain why they avoided them.
As for no fishmongers on the South Coast - maybe not. Fishmongers are as rare as hens teeth these days, I can't think of one in Nottingham now - though there are some stalls in the Victoria market.

Absolutely. You can't negotiate on price at a major retailer - in fact, I suspect the task rules bar the teams from even trying, which is why we always seem them going to small independent retailers instead. You also can't go in and just film in a supermarket without securing permissions, which usually requires this to be pre-agreed with the company's head office.

There are no filming restrictions on using supermarkets - on the food tasks, we frequently see them buying ingredients there.

No, actually, you're right about the lack of filming restriction. Although I do still think there's a rule in the negotiation tasks that prevents them from going in to a supermarket to negotiate (where they would just be a colossal pain in the arse) rather than buy (where they're just a customer with a camera crew).

But it makes no sense in the real world. You buy mussels from a supermarket for say £5 a Kg, you don't need to haggle and can be in and out in 5mins or spend 30mins haggling in a fishmonger to pay £6 a kg down from the original £7 etc.

In business you get the best price regardless of discounts.

Well, yes. But this is a test of various business skills. So showing you can negotiate, can haggle down a price is more important in assessing you as a potential Sugar partner than the ability to simply pop into Tescos.

Could they have maybe found a wholesale instead? Although I am not sure the quantities would be big enough.... what would happen if you got too much but for a better price?

I can't believe there are no fishmongers in Kent and seeing as they seem to have access to Yellow Pages how hard could it have been to find one? Some delis sell mussels as well. Going to a restaurant was a ridiculous idea.

That may've been a good idea. I expect they shut quite early in the day though - they often seem to waste a lot of time on 'planning' on this task.
I do know there are market stalls and fish mongers down by Folkestone harbour so maybe there are the same at Dover? But you'd need to be familiar with those sort of coastal towns to know that.

I'd rather a contestant showed some knowledge and say "lets pop into a supermarket, we can pick up all the items, there and save money" than "lets spend all morning getting one item, but we can haggle and save 50p"

And LAS would say the same

Well, it was a task to see their negotiation skills, and basically taking the first "no" and walking away, without even speaking directly to the person saying no was a bit of a poor negotiation, especially as it seemed to imply that they did have what they wanted.

But then the LordSirAllun definition of "negotiation" seems to be to hammer, flam, insult and lie to your supplier until they agree take a massive loss just to get you out of their shop.

Maybe, but the producers would'nt want that

Well yes I assume there's a rule saying they must use such and such shops. It was strange that both teams went to a small town, why not stay in Calais?

Or was the item sponsored by the French Tourist board!

I don't think there's much in Calais other than the hypermarkets. So going off to a proper market town should give them more smaller outfits.

The delay here was caused by Vana dumping the mussels on the English subteam only after they'd discovered the lace was French. It was yet another arbitrary decision and a poor one as the group in France could have looked for the snails and mussels at the same food market.

On familiarity with coastal towns, surely they must have been to the seaside as children? Ah, except perhaps Vana, as most of America is nowhere near the sea, so it is a shame she was running the show.

Yep. Buy the cheaper items quickly just to avoid the fines, and then spend your time getting a good deal on the big ticket items. Seems logical to me.

It certainly is not a good use to time to have four blokes in suits having a twenty minute strategy meeting on the pavement just to buy a single block of cheese.

Known ng that part of the Kent coast quite well - the numpties should have just headed down to Hastings or any of he other coastal town where you can buy direct from the fishermen there are absolutely LOADS of them down there - selling fish etc from their garages!

And there are loads of boat jumble places around where they could have got the anchor/ boat and whatever the other chandlery item was!

They did state on "You're fired" that they had a late start (don't know why) so they couldn't get the fish from a Mongres as they'd have sold out by then - leaving Restaurants as their only option.

It does seem odd that they'd have been that late starting, you'd think they'd have been able to get fish at a Market or fishmongres until late morning at least - in fact later - round my way in Essex there are a couple of those fresh fish vans around until mid afternoon most days in retail parks etc. Trying to get from a restaurant seemed bizarre in the extreme - as if they'd sell the ingredients they'd need for that night's dinner service and if they did there would be a huge mark up on it.

I think supermarkets and hypermarkets can't be allowed due to them not being able to get discounts there, no matter how good their negotiating skills are.

It is different in the task where they need to buy goods in bulk to use to make something else or sell on as that is where their profits comes.

I am also amazed when they have to buy say 10kg of mussels and someone says sorry we only have 5kg they say no okay, instead of saying OK that will do we might be able to pick up another 5kg somewhere else.

They started at 8am!

When she said 'it was late....by then' I took that as meaning whereas any normal person would have said 'right.... mussels, piece of p**s lets stop off at mongers / wholesalers first thing and then get on with the other stuff', but of course this is The Apprentice so we've got to drive around in circles for 4 hours in a taxi wondering where the hell you can get mussels from - oh wait is that a Chinese Take Away.... perhaps?

At least it gave Karren the chance for her bizarre rant about 'not seeing the restaurant manager' as of course she / he would have undoubtedly sold them all their mussels at a knock down price and told the chefs to take the rest of the day off.