Greenfields hit back hard.

They put out a statement. Pascoe's Pasties was removed from our range following concerns about quality and consistency. Our Finest Cornish Pasty was developed by our own expert team over two years. Any similarity is due to the traditional nature of the Cornish pasty.

Quality concerns.

In three years, they'd never once complained about quality. Not in a single email. I had every email. I checked.

But people believed it. Of course they did. Greenfields was a huge, trusted company. I was just a woman from Cornwall with a grudge.

Online, the comments started.

Sounds like sour grapes.

A pasty's a pasty. Get over it.

Small business can't compete, blames big business. Classic.

A journalist from a business magazine called me “bitter.”

The worst part was the messages. Dozens of them. From other small suppliers. A cheesemaker in Somerset. A jam maker in Kent. A bakery in Yorkshire.

The same thing happened to us, they wrote. But we can't say anything. We still sell to them. They'd destroy us.

Not one of them would go public.

I didn't blame them.

I was starting to wonder if I'd been a fool to do it myself.