Dropping from 10,000 to 1700 sales per week is a devastating blow for any business, but for Guy Grieve – diver-proprietor of the Ethical Shellfish Company on the isle of Mull – it represents a much-needed ray of hope.

For only weeks ago he had lost everything. Now thanks to social media he is tentatively clawing his way back – with a totally new business model.

More than a decade since starting his business he was happily supplying around two tonnes of top-quality hand-dived king scallops to Michelin-starred restaurants across Scotland, London and the rest of the UK. The best seafood wholesale partners were also on his books. Then came the pandemic. Restaurants closed, and wham. Grieve’s carefully nurtured livelihood stopped faster than a scallop shuts its shell.

“We thought we had it worked out,” Grieve tells me. “We always refused export on principal because I look to see the whites of the eyes of the people I deal with. With export the whole relationship is based on numbers. We were able to build really strong UK market for our scallops and had great relationships with the best chefs in the UK. We thought we were in a really good place ahead of Brexit, and were feeling really positive about the future. Then came Covid. We went from delivering 10,000 scallops a week to zero. Our customers closed overnight and our business was gone.”

Faced with the grim reality that many of his business customers may not open again, and that those restaurants that do may be unable to afford the same price for his scallops as before - in turn meaning he wouldn’t be able to pay the same wages to his divers and boatmen - Grieve was forced to re-think his entire business model. As he puts it, “We were tempted to hunker down and stay in our bunks, but we decided to sail on.

“To paraphrase Darwin, it isn’t just the fittest and most intelligent species that survives – it’s the one most willing to adapt.”

Deciding to try selling online to private individuals in Glasgow and Edinburgh was a bold, if desperate, leap into uncharted waters. But Grieve was pleasantly taken aback at the response to his first tentative Tweet on May 18, where he asked if ordinary consumers might be interested in buying his large scallops at £2 each and medium at £1.50. They’re receive them within hours of their being carefully hand-harvested from the seabed.

He attracted 11,000 impressions and 1100 direct communications from that first tweet and interest hasn’t diminished. He had to cap orders for the pilot run, to give him time to dive for them, and is set to hand-deliver 1700 scallops to 35 addresses in Glasgow wiht 52 customers in Edinburgh collecting from a central point next week [June 4 and 5 respectively]. His teenage sons, Oscar and Luke, will do the driving and despatch initially, with the potential to join the new-look business to take it into the future.

“The goodwill from the public that we’ve encountered with this experiment has been absolutely gobsmacking, and I can see the power of social media,” he says. “The experience has given me hope.”

That hope is as fragile as shellfish in a hatchery. “The question is, how much is this short-term goodwill, and how much is it an indication for the future?,” he angsts. “We simply won’t know until we try.”

He is also selling ethically- and sustainably-sourced mussels, oysters and lobster. I ask if he is surprised at the keen interest in shellfish from the Central Belt hoi polloi.

“There’s always been an appetite for seafood in Scotland,” he replies. “However, people tend to eat them only in restaurants. There hasn’t been the confidence in the cooking of them, so they entrust that to chefs.

“Now people want to give it a go themselves. It’s a new ‘let’s give it a shot’ mentality.”

I wonder if it means supermarkets will have to change their sourcing policies if consumer demand for quality local shellfish is high enough.

His answer is emphatic. “What we’re doing here is cutting out the cynical trade of the middle men. This is a whole new conversation, and it’s between you, me and the fishermen. If we can get it to you efficiently, you’re eating it 10 hours from the sea.”

So, the start of an entirely new food culture, then?

“The food culture will change through this,” he says. “It will have to if independent Scottish producers are to survive.

“We may yet go under. But if this pilot works, it will benefit Scotland’s food security for when restaurants do return.”

The final irony is that scallop stocks are in optimum condition after 10 weeks of being left untouched. “The lockdown has been great for the fishery and shellfish is in the best possible place it’s been for years. But where’s the market going to be?” he wonders.

“If the big commercial dredgers take over, that would be the worst outcome of all.”