The Good Food Boutique
Food, glorious food...
Food, glorious food … that should be the anthem of The Good Food Boutique newly opened in Stornoway by Niseach Emma Campbell-Macleod.
The Good Food Boutique aims to fill a gap in the market – and the empty spaces in people’s stomachs – with the most delicious array of foods and drinks.
The shop has taken on the premises in Cromwell Street once renowned to local shoppers as DD Morrison’s and more recently as the music shop called Cèol.
The Good Food Boutique has a mouthwatering array of exotic foods and drinks. These include a wide range of cheeses, continental meats, patés, smoked produce, spices, dried foods, sauces and dressings. There are also condiments, jams, chutneys and confectionery as well as artisan bread, coffee, tea and snacks.
In the future the shop will be trying try to stock as much as possible of locally-produced fruit, vegetables, eggs and so on and available soon will be fine local home-baking as well as speciality whiskies, wines and ales.
At the start of this year, Emma and her husband Donnie Macleod from Crossbost moved back to Lewis from Oban. They had both been working for a salmon-farming company. She had also worked for a busy delicatessen and coffee shop in Oban called The Kitchen Garden.
“I love food. I love cooking food for people. I love trying out all sorts of new tastes so when we moved home it was a natural progression to look at setting up a food shop,” said Emma. “I had a dream of opening our own delicatessen or farm shop so when we came to Lewis, we just went for it.”
Emma moved off Lewis originally to study forensic science at Teesside University. In all, she was 14 years away from the islands, but during the time she and Donnie were living in Oban, they found themselves coming back so often that they decided it was time to return permanently. Donnie is now managing a fish farm in Breasclete and Emma worked for the Western Isles NHS Board for some months.
Emma’s experience – in forensic science, fish farm quality assurance and in the Oban delicatessen – left her well-equipped with the qualifications and experience that are needed to run a food outlet.
After getting back to Lewis in January she set about doing some market research to find what people felt about the idea for a specialist food shop or delicatessen – and it was while she was questioning potential customers in a street survey that she was told there was a suitable town centre shop coming available.
Within days, a deal had been done to move into the former premises of Cèol, and within three weeks of non-stop activity, thanks to unstinting help from a whole range of suitably skilled family members and friends, the shop had been successfully converted, shop-fitted and opened.
At the time of writing, the new shop is partly concealed by the scaffolding of the Stornoway improvement project that is restoring the roof and the outside of the building. It is hoped that the external work will be completed in the early autumn but The Good Food Boutique – which is open six days a week from 8.30 am to 5.30 pm – is already attracting lots of attention from eager shoppers.
In addition to the wide range of international foods, Emma aims to build up a base of local produce as well. “I really want to look at promoting local production of fruit and vegetables as well as jams, chutneys, salmon and other local output.” Already they are stocking stocking cupcakes made locally, known as Kazza’s Cakes.
Towards the end of July, the shop was given a licence for alcohol off-sales and during August it will be starting to sell specialist whiskies, fine wines and beers from small-scale breweries.
Contact
The Good Food Boutique, 59 Cromwell Street
Tel: 01851 701394
Open: 8.30am - 5.30pm Monday - Saturday
