The concept of disillusioned professionals quitting the rat race to go it alone in catering is not a new one. During the 1970s, opening a restaurant became de rigueur for jaded workers who wanted to combine their passion for food with earning a living. In the 1980s, the trend was for wine bars. Now we can’t get enough of delicatessens.
Wander through the streets of any Scottish city or village and you can’t move for newly opened gourmet delicatessens and bijou eateries. Foot-and-mouth disease, BSE and a recent spate of food scares have made us more conscious of where our food comes from. We are taking real pleasure in eating and buying gourmet foods, and deli owners are riding the wave of this enthusiasm.
Phil Kember and his girlfriend Claire Jones gave up a glamorous life in Monaco running a bespoke concierge service for the rich and famous to open Kember and Jones Fine Food Emporium in Glasgow’s west end — and they’re glad they made the move.
Their former careers could never be described as mundane, taking them from the ski slopes of the French Alps to the sunny beaches of the Côte d’Azur. Jones, 27, trained as an opera singer at Glasgow’s Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama before moving to Meribel in France, where she worked as a chef in a five-star chalet resort. There she met Kember, a business studies graduate, who had a managerial position in the hospitality industry. After three years they moved to Monaco, where they ran their concierge business. They loved the sunshine and the whirlwind social scene, but after a couple of years it lost its allure and they were eager to put down roots. They decided to return to Scotland.
“We wanted to do something where we were in charge rather than running around trying to keep other people happy all the time,” says 31-year-old Kember.
“I wanted to do something I was passionate about.” Jones adds. “In some of my previous jobs it felt like I was just another person on the factory production line. Now I have a lot of personal input and that makes all the difference.”
Far from downsizing, 80-hour weeks have become commonplace for the couple since they opened the shop last month.
The same is true of Angus Ferguson, who opened Demijohn, Edinburgh’s first “liquid deli”, a fortnight ago. Showing customers around his Victoria Street shop, Ferguson’s enthusiasm is impossible to resist. Yet only a month ago, the Kirkcudbright-born Ferguson was an army captain with the Black Watch, with which he had toured the world in active service, as well as captaining the army ski team. When he opened his deli, his regiment was being posted to Iraq.
“The army life was fantastic, but after a while it becomes a selfish boy’s lifestyle,” says Ferguson. Married since 2000, with a baby daughter, Flora, and another child due in January, Ferguson’s priorities had changed. “I wanted to be a family man. I was looking for a change that would give me a better way of life,” he says.
Tasting olive oil and sourcing new gins is certainly a radical change from barrack life, but he feels he has control of his life.
“I love the fact that I work for myself,” he says. “I can choose when I get a day off, but I don’t want one. I love chatting with customers about fine wine. That’s my idea of a good job.”
He laughs when he recalls his former colleagues’ reaction to the news that he was about to give up the army to open a boutique specialising in Scottish raspberry vodka and damson gin. He acknowledges that it was not an obvious career move, but adds that he always knew it was the right decision for him.
Although the notion of running a deli sounds idyllic — days spent nibbling fancy cheeses and hobnobbing with customers — Ferguson, Kember and Jones are keen to stress that it is far from an easy option. Long hours, staff management and endless sourcing of new ingredients to keep stock fresh and customers interested are all part of the day-to-day grind. But despite sacrificing evenings and weekends, all three say that the move has been enjoyable and has given them back their lives.
Sue Berits agrees. She gave up a large salary and frequent foreign travel as a senior manager with DHL, the express delivery service, after growing tired of the pressures of corporate life. The idea of opening a delicatessen started over a series of dinner-party conversations with her friends.
It seemed like the perfect job: opening a speciality food shop and continental-style cafe that would let her eat, sleep and breathe her passion for food. But she knew that opening a shop in her home town of Kippen — population 1,000 — was a big risk. Did a tiny rural community want the finest quality Italian olive oil and foie gras? There was only one way to find out. In April this year Berits bit the bullet, climbing off the corporate ladder and opening Berits & Brown in Kippen with her business partner, Peter Brown.
“It seemed like lunacy when we first brought up the idea, but I’m so glad I ignored the sceptics. Now people talk about Kippen as the new food capital of the central belt,” she says.
Looking back, Brown says he knew even in the dinner-party days that if the enterprise came off he would want to be part of it. “We fell in love with the idea and I didn’t want to look back on my life and think about what could have been,” he says. “You only get one shot at life and I was determined to do something I enjoyed.”
Kember admits that he wakes up some days having forgotten the enormity of his recent life change. But while he misses the sunshine of southern Europe, he insists that he and Jones have no regrets.
“We’ve not taken the easy option,” he says. “New businesses can be unstable, but it’s worth the worry and responsibility for the sense of freedom it gives us.
“We finish the day white as a sheet and absolutely knackered, but we know we’ve done the right thing. We’re finally doing what we both love.”
