Kindness not half-baked at city cafe bar

CAFE bar owner Kelly Fairweather had a nice surprise when she opened the door to her Dundee premises.

Inside The Selkie she found a card with a message and a £5 tip – but the kind gesture was in response to Kelly’s own generosity.

Kelly explained: “Two girls – Kayleigh Anderson and Hannah Coventry – had come to the door looking for gluten-free cake. If you are celiac, it can be quite difficult.

“They asked if we were open. I was only in doing the cleaning, but we had started baking for an afternoon tea we were doing so I asked what they were looking for.

“I gave them some boxes of gluten-free cakes. Then, when I went in the next day, they’d left a wee card, a bar of chocolate and £5. It made me laugh, it was like running a speakeasy for cake, smuggling it out the door.

“When you’re in the service industry there are always stories about grumpy customers, but it’s so nice when customers realise that you’re human too.

“We probably have the kindest customers in Dundee. We have not been there long and we have a lovely community.”

Kelly and her team have been handing out free meals to families struggling during the pandemic. And the money Kayleigh and Hannah left will benefit a young man The Selkie helped with their community food project.

Kelly said: “When we were doing the community meals we were helping a young man who had had a hard time. He has actually been accepted to do medicine so the fiver will go in his pot for university.

“We have been keeping all the tips for him, as it has just been family working just now, to get him set up for uni.

“He had a bit of a hard time and he contacted us through the community meals and then his teacher got in touch and told us how much a difference it had made and that he got accepted for medicine. I was like ‘Wow! That’s great’.

“You can’t solve everything but you can make people know that you care. I have never met him but I am so proud of him.”

The Selkie’s community meals provided a lifeline to several families.

Kelly said many people saw their situations change, sometimes overnight, and they were glad to be able to help.

She said: “When we were doing the community meals we were always going to fund it ourselves, the first 1,000 meals anyway (they ended up doing more than 1,600), and then people were coming in to buy a cup of coffee and putting the money for another cup of coffee in the pot to help.

“Some families were really needing a hand and some of the people who were getting meals were our customers who ended up losing their jobs.

“They had been coming in spending £40 on coffee, cake and lunch and then suddenly it all changed and within a month they needed help.

“They have helped us by putting money in the till when we were starting up so it felt right to be able to help.

“There are a lot of people who don’t fit in the traditional boxes for help because they do work or live in a house with a mortgage.

“No one saw Covid-19 coming so it is a case of but for the grace of God for us all.”