shelftalk
Northern exposure With the ‘Harrods of Scotland’ about to undertake a major food hall extension, we talk to House of Bruar food buying chief Robert Thain (right) about this powerful showcase for 300-plus suppliers
Deli of the Month INTERVIEW BY mick whitworth
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t’s a brisk November morning in the heart of the Grampian mountains. Winter is late arriving, the leaves on the trees have just turned from green to copper. What a beautiful day for a bracing Highlands walk. Instead of which, I am teetering precariously on an upended log, being laughed at by assorted Scotsmen as I take photos of Robert Thain, food buying manager for the House of Bruar. We’re in the famous Perthshire clothing and lifestyle store’s central courtyard, just outside the doors to its food hall. I want to get a shot of Thain in front of his seasonal veg display without showing the wooden reindeer and other festive trimmings that will make the photo look out-ofdate by January. Thain – smartly turned out in suitably House of Bruar country style, including a tie with a shotgun-
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January-February 2014 · Vol.15 Issue 1
locals, it has grown into a genuinely cartridge motif – is doing his best to unique destination store, with annual look serious. But he eventually cracks, sales around the £20m mark. It also throwing his head back in a guffaw employs 200 people in a part of the and providing me with a photo that world where year-round jobs are hard I will later email to him for the family to come by. album. “There’s not been a year go by Robert Thain has worked for when we haven’t expanded in terms House of Bruar man and boy, and has of retail space,” says Thain, adding: just given me a whistlestop tour of the “If you’d told someone back in the site he knows so well. I’m surprised day that it would be like this, they to find that the food hall, well known would have laughed at you.” to the trade UK-wide as one of our top speciality food outlets, is a We never negotiate [with suppliers] relatively modest over volume and price. We see about part of the whole – although it’s about 1.4 million visitors a year. That’s to get bigger. what we bring to the party. House of Bruar The 11 acre site today contains was opened in 1995 by Yorkshiresome 100,000 sq ft of retail space, born Mark Birkbeck and his wife with the emphasis on premium-label Linda. The couple created the Jumpers textiles, including country brands like fashion chain in the 1980s, building it Barbour, Musto and Orvis, as well as to 130 stores and £100m sales before gifts, kitchenware, toys, fishing tackle selling it in 1992 and heading north. and even contemporary art, plus a Their Scottish venture too began 200-seater restaurant adjoining the as a clothing-led business, based food hall. The ethos throughout, says on the site of a former Highlands Thain, is to promote “the best of hotel near the Falls of Bruar and Scottish products, then British, and the village of Blair Atholl. Despite then the rest of the world”. its distance from big population The client base is not as heavily centres and the initial scepticism of
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tourist-led as you might expect, but the remote location dictates most shoppers come from outside the immediate area. The key trading months are August to October, when the nearby hunting and fishing lodges are full, but Thain says recent years have seen House of Bruar, sited slap on the A9 about nine miles north of Pitlochry, become “more of a destination” for shoppers living further afield, as well as a regular stop-off for commuters. “There are a lot of people from Edinburgh or Inverness who will meet in the middle, have some breakfast or lunch and do some shopping.” The biggest challenge is not so much the 80-mile distance from Edinburgh as the unpredictable winter weather. “If the A9 is shut we don’t see anybody,” says Thain, “so if we have a stinker of a winter it can change the outcome of the whole year.” Tourist body Visit Scotland reckons House of Bruar is “Scotland’s most prestigious independent store”, and the business is often described as “the Harrods of Scotland”. But that doesn’t quite capture it, with both the stunning location and the emphasis