After 21 years as the owner of Elgin cafe Scribbles, Faith Houlding decided the best time to expand her business for the first time was in the middle of a global pandemic.
“You have to speculate to accumulate,” the 48-year-old says with a laugh as she remembers how she came to open her new delicatessen in Elgin town centre.
“And I think it was down to me trying to get a little bit of positivity out of the situation.”
The Deli Next Door officially opened its doors at the start of this month. As the name suggests, it is right beside Faith’s Scribbles cafe, which has been a fixture on Elgin’s High Street for more than two decades.
And though it may seem unusual to take on a major business expansion at a time of uncertainty, for Faith it makes perfect sense.
She feels it is up to her to bring back good times to a town that has been through a lot lately.
“As a local community we have seen the downsizing of personnel at [nearby military base] Lossiemouth,” Faith says. “We’ve also been through two recessions, and we’ve come through all of that. So investing in the local community with another business shows that there is something brighter at the end of it.”
Elgin’s backbone
Faith also believes that independent businesses, as the “backbone of town centres”, are more important to a local community than larger chain restaurants.
“Our staying power is far greater than the big companies that can just switch the lights off, turn a key and leave,” she says.
“We aren’t a nine-to-five, 39-hour week. And Elgin is testament to that, because you look at certain areas of the High Street and it’s the independents that have invested in the buildings and the businesses.”
Faith’s ambition for the Deli Next Door is to have an American-style delicatessen that offers Elgin a full-range of meats, cheeses and baked goods.
The shop, which sits in the former Edinburgh Woollen Mill building, has a salad bar and Faith is making up sandwich platters for business lunches and birthdays.
She’s also bringing in sausage rolls and pork pies to bolster her shop-made dishes.
So far, the reaction has been positive.
“People are just really surprised that a place like this exists in Elgin,” Faith says, adding that the Deli Next Door was swamped over the platinum jubilee weekend.
“What a fantastic day,” Faith continues.
“It was just such a good mix of people and it was just such a pleasurable shift to have. Everyone’s been so supportive.”
Deli Next Door’s next generation
The deli marks a change for Faith from working in the hospitality of Scribbles to retail.
But she is bringing her years of cafe experience to the new venture, as well some loyal staff.
In fact, Scribbles has been operating for such a long time that Faith is now employing the children of her original staff.
“We’ve been incredibly lucky that we have seen a lot of our team from their teen years right through to adulthood,” she says.
“Some of the team members we have, they used to be brought in by their parents as kids, so we’ve known them from primary school. And then we’re lucky enough to be able to employ them as teenagers and onwards. It’s really nice.”
The Deli Next Door is on 158 High Street, Elgin and opens every day except Sunday. For opening hours, check the shop’s Facebook page here.
Conversation