Scotland’s Café Culture

Muir of Ord was a two-trick little village in the Highlands, home to the Black Isle’s only whisky distillery and one of the largest agricultural shows in Scotland until the Bad Girl Bakery sashayed into town, with its glamorous Fifties frock-and-pinny logo, wild Willy Wonker-esque creativity, and Gin & Tonic cupcakes. 

Bad Girls make good cakes is the tongue-in-cheek ethos behind Jeni Iannetta’s colourful café. Famous for its wickedly indulgent cakes, the name is a playful poke at an out-dated adage - that if it’s nice it must be naughty. Along with those G&T (made from local Loch Ness Gin) cupcakes, you might find temptingly gooey crème brûlée doughnuts on the counter, cherry cheesecake brownies and vanilla caramel fudge cupcakes oozing caramel and topped with Orkney Fudge. 

The woman behind some of the most moreish cakes in the Highlands quit a successful career in the arts (Scottish Opera and Dundee Contemporary Arts) to turn her passion into the day job. The journey took her from trestle tablebakes to train, after she was headhunted by the Caledonian Sleeper and the National Trust for Scotland - the catalyst, in 2017, to set up her own bakery and café with her husband Douglas Hardie. 

In its short life the Bad Girl Bakery has already gone through a number of reincarnations. When Covid careered onto the scene, they rolled with the pandemic-shaped punches, hunkering down and turning the café into a food and cake-themed cook shop selling everything from spatulas to cake stands, flour and eggs – and sharing some of their signature recipes with their customers so they could bake them at home. 

Now open again, all jazzed up and jaunty with cherry red chairs and pale-pine bench seating, there’s more than coffee and cake on the menu. They’ve added cupcake classes and sausage roll workshops. Jeni has just launched her first recipe book (a whole chapter dedicated to ‘breakfast cake’) and turned her hand to cake consultancy, while the couple’s cool, retro aluminum Cake & Coffee Caravan can be found down by the river in Inverness at the weekend - part of the city’s new streetfood scene spearheaded by Hardie. 

Jeni Iannetta is the perfect poster girl, in fact, for Scotland’s café culture, which is characterised by entrepreneurial chutzpah and bold, ballsy inventiveness. This is the country that took a perfectly good Mars Bar and thought how can we make it better? It’s a whipped cream and marshmallows on top of the hot chocolate mentality.

In cities such as Edinburgh and Glasgow, of course, there are tiny hole-in-the-wall joints presided over by topknotted, hipster baristas. Many not only roast their own beans, but will tell you the latitude and longitude of the plantation they came from and the names of the farmer’s children. But out in the sticks it’s a different story. 

You’ve still got a smattering of artisan coffee roasters such as Glen Lyon in Aberfeldy in Perthshire, founded by Fiona and Jamie Grant, a writer and photographer who met in Bolivia while working for Lonely Planet. Their wood-clad roastery has a pop-up café from Thursday to Saturday. But cafes in the country tend to wear a number of different aprons and don’t slot so neatly into one category. 

You can cradle a single-origin flat white while getting your bike fixed, doing your weekly deli shop or buying vintage vinyl. ‘More than coffee and cake’ is the USP of Scottish café culture. 

The Watermill, also in Aberfeldy, is an award-winning independent bookshop, café and art gallery created by Jayne and Kevin Ramage who fell in love with a dilapidated 19th century mill and turned it into a creative village hub in 2005. Nearby, in Blair Atholl, you’ll find one of the last working watermills in Scotland, run by Israeli baker Rami Cohen and his Scottish wife Kirsty. You can take a tour, buy bags of the mill’s wholemeal and bread flour, or tuck into one of his famous bagels filled with local smoked salmon in the rustic little café, once the mill’s grain store.

Further north, the Isle of Skye Baking Company is a bakery, woodburner-warmed café and artisan craft gallery in a sprawling old woollen mill on the edge of Portree, set up by South African couple Barry and Liza Hawthorne. Their signature lunch breads are legendary, with fillings such as chilli venison chorizo and butternut squash baked into the bread – the perfect ‘piece’ for hungry walkers.

In bonnie Beauly, the neighbouring village to Muir of Ord, Corner on the Square is a popular gourmet deli and café. When Gary and Jacqui Williamson took it on almost 20 years ago, there was a move away from small community shops towards anonymous convenience stores. “But,” Gary says, “for a place like Beauly that didn’t make sense.” 

Their vision was to keep the shop at the heart of the community, adding a small kitchen and a handful of tables.

As the café became more popular they extended until they found the right balance. From the start, they focused on high quality artisan produce with great provenance and a good story attached – which to begin with meant French and Spanish charcuterie and cheeses. Now they stock three Scottish charcuterie makers. Scotland can now hold its own when it comes to artisan producers. 

“The deli and café continually feed each other. People browse the shelves while sitting at the tables. It’s a layer cake, made up of different parts - but the café is at the heart of it all.” 

Coffee houses have always been more than somewhere to eat and drink. Sweeping across Europe in the 17th century, they soon evolved into meeting places where people could exchange ideas, igniting philosophical and political debate. In a way that tradition continues today. Catherine Franks, the founder of Steampunk Café in the coastal town of North Berwick in East Lothian, shares her vision and ideas on sustainability with locals. 

Originally from Washington DC and a keen home-baker, she opened her first café, in North Berwick when her children were young. After selling that café she began roasting coffee in her garage and her next venture was a pop-up in a 20th century furniture store in town. “I’ve always been interested in a collaborative way of working,” she says.

Next came a pop-up in a local museum. And then, in 2011, she took her coffee and cake on the road with Mavis, a vintage yellow VW van, becoming a fixture at Stockbridge Market in Edinburgh and music festivals and events around the country (Mavis only retired in 2021). 

Steampunk Coffee found a permanent base in an old warehouse in North Berwick in 2014. The name comes from a science fiction genre that imagines a future powered by Victorian machinery – which fits with her ethos and environmental approach of fixing and repurposing rather than opting for shiny and new. The Steampunk Café is kitted out with an eclectic collection of junkyard finds, including mismatched furniture, bathroom sinks made from old copper brewer’s funnels, and a second-hand roaster, along with the vintage van. The make-do-and-mend mentality is Steampunk. The shabby chic vibe is not a design concept but the real deal.

It was important to her for Steampunk to not just be a café but to share the story of where the coffee comes from, for people to be able to see the beans being roasted onsite. And for there to be space for collaborations. Upstairs at the weekends you can curl up on squishy sofas and rummage through boxes of vinyl – old and new - as Orange Moon Records, a popup record store, takes up residence. 

In Inverness there’s another café with an environmental conscience. Velocity Café and Bicycle Workshop is a vegan and vegetarian eatery, bike repair shop (with free cycling skills courses) and a social enterprise with projects across the Highlands aiming to promote a healthy lifestyle, wellbeing and sustainability – encouraging zero food waste is currently high on the agenda. 

All quirky charm with bright-blue wooden floors, there’s a bike hanging from the ceiling above a huge communal table - a big hit with customers, manager Chris James tells me. On the menu created by Ruth Cole, aka the Antisocial baker, you’ll find French toast topped with miso caramelised banana, flaked almonds, brown sugar and honey, and decadent cakes such as orange and whisky cheesecake. 

In the evening there’s a series of events to check out, from coffee masterclasses to poetry readings and vegan tapas nights. Think bao buns with crispy tofu, Japanese mayo, coriander and pickled shredded vegetables, watermelon ceviche with seeded crackers, and grilled pak choi with broccoli and ginger salad. To finish, sweet Swedish semlor buns filled with almond crème filling and vanilla and cherry cream. It’s a cool hangout, always buzzing, with a creative vibe. So much more, in fact, than just a café.

Businesses featured: 

Bad Girl Bakery 
Muir of Ord 
badgirlbakery.co.uk 
Instagram: @badgirlbakery 

Glen Lyon 
Aberfeldy 
glenlyoncoffee.co.uk 
Instagram: @glenlyoncoffee 

Aberfeldy Watermill Bookshop & Café 
Aberfeldy 
aberfeldywatermill.com 
Instagram:@aberfeldywatermillbookshop 

Blair Atholl Watermill 
Blair Atholl 
blairathollwatermill.co.uk 
Instagram: @blairathollwatermill 

Isle of Skye Baking Company 
Isle of Skye 
isleofskyebakingcompany.co.uk 
Instagram: @skyebakingco 

Corner on the Square 
Beauly 
corneronthesquare.co.uk 
Instagram: @corneronthesquaredeli 

Steampunk Café 
North Berwick 
steampunkcoffee.co.uk 
Instagram: @steampunkcoffee 

Velocity Café & Bicycle Workshop 
Inverness 
velocitylove.co.uk 
Instagram: @velocityinverness