It’s rare you’ll meet anyone as enthusiastic about their business as Lorraine Duthie.
She is the owner of Lettuce Eat Healthy, a Peterhead cafe specialising in homely cuisine that brings great joy to its customers.
After her husband suffered from a severe health scare, Lorraine was inspired to grab life by the reins, push herself out of her comfort zone and open her own cafe.
She’d never previously run her own business before. But combining her passion for home cooking with her love for working with people was a match made in heaven.
Now, Lettuce Eat Healthy’s comfort food and Instagrammable appeal has made it a pillar in the Peterhead community, and Lorraine couldn’t be happier with the cafe’s success.
We talked to Lorraine to find out more about Lettuce Eat Healthy…
Tell us about yourself
I was originally brought up on a farm, then we moved into the village of St. Fergus. I’ve been born and bred there almost all of my days. I went to Peterhead Academy, then I left to head to Aberdeen College where I studied nursery nursing.
Eventually, I ended up becoming interested in social work and went back to university and earned my degree.
During this time, I had a year and a half out living in Australia living with my husband, Michael, and two children, Abigail, 23, and Saul, 18. We then came back to the north-east, my husband worked in the oil industry and I went back into social work.
What inspired you to start Lettuce Eat Healthy?
While my husband was working offshore around a decade ago, he unfortunately had a heart attack aged just 40.
The prognosis of it at the time wasn’t very good – he couldn’t be guaranteed five years of life because his heart had been so badly damaged.
He has kept in really good health since then though and is working again, which is great. But at the time, he couldn’t continue working offshore, so we both started investing in property.
Our original plan for the building where we are now was to open it up as a guest house. But it had this disused, former antiques shop as part of the lot.
We sat on this for around three years, then I decided – going back to my farming days where my mum and granny had always done home cooking – ‘what can’t you buy off the internet that I could use this shop for?’
I knew I could make a good sandwich and a good pot of soup, so I thought I’d open it up as a soup and sandwich bar.
That’s where it came from. And because my husband had gone into really healthy eating after the heart attack, I thought to call it Lettuce Eat Healthy.
How have things evolved for Lettuce Eat Healthy since it began?
So, we started off on the 13th April 2015 and I’d never been in business before. It was a bit of a scary thing. But there was huge demand straight away.
Within two years, we ended up creating an extension to the cafe called the sitooterie (an indoor outside building, a bit like a porch) which reminded me a lot of the farming community I grew up around.
Things were going well.
But then a few years later Covid hit.
We did things like takeaway and my husband and I fed over 2,000 people across 6-8 weeks during the height of restrictions.
Afterwards, we dabbled in different things like changing our opening days, which was influenced by Covid. We’re not opening on Sundays anymore because I want our staff to have a life outside of work.
That’s what I’ve learned from the pandemic – that you should live the day as it is because you don’t know if tomorrow will turn out as it promises.
What are some of your most popular dishes?
We created our menu right at the beginning with all of our sandwiches having their own names.
One of the most popular ones of these is The Highlander. This consists of onion chutney, slow cooked brisket of beef, Scottish mature cheddar and is topped with haggis. We sold over 3,500 of these in the first year of opening.
More recently, we’ve been going down the road of offering things like dirty fries.
Our eggs benedict is popular for breakfast – which we sometimes like to jazz up a bit by putting in some pink food colouring to the hollandaise sauce!
But the main thing with our food, and I know our name is Lettuce Eat Healthy, but it’s about eating everything in moderation. It’s not about salads with next to nothing in them, it’s about moderation.
What drinks do you offer?
As well as regular teas and coffees, we now have an alcohol licence, so we’re able to offer cocktails too. Caitlin and Amanda are our mixologists – they’re a couple of nutters, to be honest! But the people seem to love what they come up with.
At the moment, there’s things like pornstar martinis, but we’re hoping to expand our cocktail menu soon to bring in some of our own original names influenced by areas of Peterhead.
Elsewhere, our afternoon teas with cocktails and boozy brunches are both very popular.
Do you source ingredients locally?
My dad still grows some of the vegetables that we use in the cafe and my mum likes to come in and help with bits and bobs like peeling carrots to make soups.
Everybody’s got a hand in it. Anyone coming in here to support us is also supporting nine other local businesses.
Our home bakes are all done by house-based home bakers, our coffee comes from Figment Coffee and we also work with The Bread Guy in Aberdeen.
What do you enjoy most about your job?
Customer service. I could yap the hind legs off of a donkey – and that is true!
I am a people person and I couldn’t see myself doing anything that’s not going to involve having human contact with people.
I absolutely love hearing people laugh and having a buzz about the cafe.
Future plans for Lettuce Eat Healthy?
We’ll be opening up for suppers again on Friday nights soon.
Fine dining nights, longer opening hours on Saturdays and private events in our sitooterie will all also be happening.
But mainly, I’m quite happy with the little wee place that I’ve got.
I’ve no hunker at all about opening up another cafe or anything like that. I’m just happy and content with the way my life is, and that’s it!
For more Lettuce Eat Healthy, visit them on Instagram.
