A SOUTH Harris artisanal food business is on the expansion trail after harnessing online channels to build a customer base.
Lorna Macaulay started operating to capacity and had to take on an extra hand as soon as she launched Lorna’s Larder in May.
The business, serving homemade food, attracted an audience reach on Facebook of over 8, 000 people in its first weekend. Ms Macaulay set up the business after gaining many years’ experience of owning and operating a café and events catering business in Edinburgh.
Ms Macaulay and her partner Grant are both from Harris and recently returned.
READ MORE: Paddleboard pioneers feel the benefit of a change of tack
Using many ingredients sourced from within the Outer Hebrides, food from Lorna’s Larder is billed as “homemade and freshly cooked on demand”, and available on a pre-order basis on Facebook and the company’s website
The firm says as well as providing healthy meals for families and catering events in Lewis and Harris, it has plans to serve the islands’ self-catering and tourism industry.
Ms Macaulay received support from Business Gateway for a business plan, setting objectives and identifying potential sources of funding. It is also helping in the next step to extending her premises to accommodate more customers.
READ MORE: 700 industry courses to be delivered by training school
Ms Macaulay said: “Since moving back to Harris and launching my business, I’ve been very busy doing pop-up cafes and outside catering in Leverburgh and Tarbert. It’s been a tremendous start.” Derek Maclean, adviser at Business Gateway Outer Hebrides, said: “Lorna’s passion for delicious, home-cooked food combined with our business support has helped Lorna’s Larder get off to a fantastic start.”
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here