The Courier & Advertiser (Perth and Perthshire Edition)
The incredible journey
After 14 long months getting The Ferry Selkie ready, owner Kelly-anne Fairweather can finally open her new restaurant.
A few lucky diners have already had The Ferry Selkie experience, as a soft launch was held the day after the restaurant got its completion certificate from Dundee City Council.
There will be another chance for a sneak peek, as it will be open on Saturday ahead of the official opening date of Thursday June 1.
Just like the original Selkie on Exchange Street, the Brook Street venue will offer small plates with a Scottish and Mediterranean twist. It will also offer lunch and breakfast once the staff have settled into the new space.
Since getting the keys in April 2022, it’s been a long and costly road to get The Ferry Selkie to where it is today. Kelly-anne’s original budget was £35,000, but she has now spent around £170,000.
“It’s been absolute hell,” she says. “Once a month I’ve wanted to stop. But when you’re in business on your own you need to have resilience.
“We’ve had 18 complaints about this building, from the colour of the outside to working without a permit.
“We’ve also been paying rent, standing charges and our contracted staff – that runs up.”
Adding to the stress of the new restaurant, the Exchange Street venue was broken into on May 5.
Kelly-anne shared the news on social media the same morning, and support from customers and local business owners poured in.
“When I got to the shop after the break-in I was raging,” she says.
“When it’s your own little shop it feels almost like your house. The Selkie is my happy place with all my little quirky bits.”
Police quickly charged a 34-year-old man with more than 60 previous convictions who later admitted to the break-in.
Once again, comments on Facebook poured in on The Selkie’s pages. But this time Kelly-anne was not happy about what she saw.
She put up her own post in response, asking people to stop calling the man who broke in a “junkie”.
Kelly says: “Nobody chooses to become a drug addict. When I realised who he was, I thought ‘I’m so lucky I don’t have to crawl through windows at 5am to get a hit’.
“I genuinely believe it’s not personal, it’s just that we were there. My aunt died after a 21-year battle with heroin. Where I grew up, that was quite normal.
“Nicola was my best friend and the best auntie in the world. She never stole or broke windows.
“When people saw her in the street, did they think she was that horrible word? I want people making comments like that to remember, that person is somebody’s everything.”
Kelly-anne’s aunt Nicola
was just three and a half years older, so they grew up together. As well as an aunt, she was also like a sister, mum and best friend.
Before opening The Selkie, the mum of eight had a cleaning company. While cleaning houses she’d be on the phone to Nicola for hours every day.
“I feel like because I’m not chatting to her for two hours a day I’ve got so much time, but no,” Kelly-anne laughs.
“When she died I had that crisis of, what do I do every day now? That was the worst feeling, she was everything to me. She was the nicest, most loving person, so honest and funny and she couldn’t win that battle (against drugs).
“She would have been the one going ‘what are you opening now? Oh my God, do you want to sleep? No?’
“That’s why it’s so important to me that The Selkie takes a stand. I don’t want to be sanctimonious but it’s important that we’re true to our values.”
Nicola passed away on May 3 2019, and the following autumn, The Selkie opened in Dundee.
Inspired by her aunt and her childhood in Whitfield, Kelly-anne decided from the start that her new venture would have community at its heart and help those in need.
At Christmas, The Selkie delivers free food hampers, for Easter it hosted a free family dinner, and any one can come pick up a free meal when they are in need.
“When you come into The Selkie, you should never feel like you don’t matter. Of course you matter,” says Kelly-anne.
“I believe we’re all put here to live the best we can and do the best we can by people. There’s a hymn I like called Make Me An Instrument Of Your Peace, I think that’s what The Selkie does.
“When we first got married and had our first couple of kids we were so skint, every Christmas Eve was a fight about whether we had enough money for shopping. I don’t want people to feel like that.
“Now we’re at a point where people feel like they belong, and that’s what’s so magical about The Selkie.”
In line with the reputation it has built up, The Ferry Selkie will offer food to those in need and host free evenings for families – no questions asked.
Kelly-anne says some people don’t think there’s a
need for help in and around Broughty Ferry, but during lockdown food drives she made many deliveries in the area.
“My nan used to say our job isn’t to judge, our job is to love,” she says.
“I’m not here to decide that if you’re a drug addict, or you have a nicer house than me I’m not feeding you.
“I’m very aware that what you see isn’t always what’s there.
“And some say that people will take advantage. That’s not my battle. That’s between them and their conscience or their maker if they believe in that.”
The kindness Kelly-anne has put out in the world seems to have come back tenfold.
The restaurant regularly gets food donations towards free meals, people
help out with activities on family evenings and local tradespeople fixed the door after the break-in.
For her staff, the owner offers a real living wage and a caring working environment she plans to nurture in The Ferry Selkie also. There will be 24 staff for the new restaurant, some with experience from the first venue.
Those that have visited the Brook Street venue have commented on how different it looks from Exchange Street.
“The Selkie in town is like, when you get your first flat. We got married at 18 and had a futon and lamps from our grans, Exchange Street is like that,” Kelly-anne laughs.
“Brook Street is literally when you move to the Ferry and decide you’re going to have a nice house.
“The Selkie is very much a story of starting over and seeing what you can cobble together. Then when you do a bit better, you start getting nicer things.”
Though the next chapter of The Selkie story is just starting with the opening of the second restaurant, Kelly-anne has already started working on the next.
She has her sights set on St Andrews, Carnoustie, Arbroath, Giffnock, Lothian and even Shetland.
In total, the entrepreneur dreams of having 10 Selkies, all with the same values and community spirit.
Kelly-anne believes part of what has made the restaurant so popular already is her openness and compassion.
“I know there’s loads of other 40-something women with a wee dream who want to make it work,” she says.
“They’re the ones that have been loyal to us, they bring their hubbies and daughters, and their daughters bring their pals for brunch.
“People are so responsive to our story and for me it’s about them coming on this crazy journey with me to see what we can do. Some say I do so much work, but I don’t, I just become the catalyst.
“I don’t know what I’ve done to deserve all this, but I’m dead thankful for it.
“No small business has a lot of money to spend, and we’re not going to pretend we do. Every penny is blood, sweat and tears, but happy tears a lot of the time.
“I don’t know how far we’re going to get, but we’re going to have a laugh.”