As a catering wholesaler, we offer a wide range of professional chefs knives for sale online. However, as a responsible catering distributor we also want to ensure that we are doing everything possible to ensure that chefs knives, steak knives and other potentially dangerous items only end up in the hands of professional caterers and are used for their intended purpose.
That’s why Buzz Catering has signed up to the Sale of Knives Voluntary Agreement By Retailers and have outlined our policy for selling chefs knives, steak knives and other age restricted professional catering products below.
We will continue to monitor this policy and ensure compliance with any legal or regulatory changes concerning the sale of chef’s knives online. We are also looking at implementing online age verification tools as soon as a viable nationally recognised service becomes available.
Read more below about how our Age Verification policy may affect your order for chefs knvies.
Age Verification Policy
- Under the Criminal Justice Act 1988, it is an offence to sell a knife to a person under the age of 18. This legislation affects us as a professional catering distributor because we sell kitchen knives, professional chefs knives and steak knives via our website, cash and carry and telephone ordering service.
- Throughout all marketing information and packaging, it is made clear that knives sold are ‘chefs knives’, ‘steak knives’ or ‘food preparation tools’ designed for the purpose of professional food preparation.
- Buzz Catering does not use checkboxes or blanket disclaimers on its website or marketing materials to confirm or verify that its chefs knives are sold to over 18s only. We recognise that these practices do not represent a valid check for age. Instead, we verify age on a per-order basis.
- Whenever we supply a professional chefs knife or steak knife, our staff will ensure all reasonable precautions and due diligence have been exercised to avoid the products ending up in the wrong hands.
Catering Cash & Carry
- Buzz Catering operates a strict Challenge 21 policy. This means that if a customer appears to be under the age of 21, our staff will ask you to verify your age by showing a valid proof of age card.
- We accept proof of age via the UK’s national Proof of Age Standards Scheme (PASS). A passport or photocard driving licence can also be accepted.
- If you cannot prove that you are over 18, we reserve the right to refuse the sale of chef’s knives.
Online Chefs Knife Sales
- We are still required to verify tyour age when chefs knives are purchased online or as a distance selling transaction. This includes orders placed via the phone or email.
- It is unlikely to be enough for us to satisfy our requirements by simply asking you to confirm your age.
- As a result, our staff may use several factors to confirm your age when they process your order:
- If you hold a credit account with us, we may have pre-verified your age through our credit checking process.
- We may check that the delivery is going to be made to a commercial address. As a catering wholesaler, most of our customers are businesses. Whilst this may add confidence that you are over 18, it does not constitute a valid check and will only be used on connection with other factors.
- We may be able to use your card details to verify your age.
- We may require that delivery be made to the same address as your billing address.
- We may hold your order whilst we request further age verification from you, for example asking you to provide a scanned copy of your passport or driving licence via email.
- We may require additional age verification to be performed at the point of delivery, such as asking our delivery driver to check your ID before handing over goods.
- We may send items using a tracked and signed for parcel service (to ensure any ID checks performed earlier are stay valid).
For any orders that we refuse due to an insufficient proof of age, a refund will be offered in line with our Terms & Conditions of Sale. For more information please contact our Customer Services team whom will be happy to help.
