PAMELA BRUNTON
messaged asking: ‘Are you still looking for somewhere to open at home?’ A restaurant had become available and did they want to check it out? By that point they were
not sure – life was busy after all – but in a twist of fate Rob’s grandmother died and they had to travel home for the funeral, so thought while there they may as well check it out. Tey went to see the
property that was to become Inver. “I think I remember saying ‘well, if this isn’t it, I don’t know what is,’” Brunton recalls. Months later they returned
home and weeks after that they opened Inver. In 2015, Brunton and
Latimer had an expectation that the first few years would be about building a reputation, making a name for themselves. Tey did not expect a global pandemic, which was of course exactly what happened in 2020. Covid-19 and consecutive lockdowns gave them three years of chaos that were at least followed by a time where people had money in their pocket to spend after years of being cooped up at home. “And when they were allowed out, they were really happy to spend it,” she says. “We were really busy right after the pandemic.” Tat all turned in 2023/24 – the cost-of-living crisis kicked in and a more unstable world began to be reflected in people’s choices when they went out. Brunton says that running
a restaurant today is “as hard as it’s ever been. Te bigger picture has changed, people are less secure, and the world is not in a great state at the moment, so
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“We get staff wanting to work with us because of our social credentials”
people are less willing and less able to spend,” she says. It is not just the food costs
and bills that are spiralling – salaries for staff can account for 50% of costs in a restaurant. Incidentally, Inver has great staff retention, no easy feat in a location far removed from the bright lights of the city. “Tere is so much crap
going on in the world today that people really appreciate the moral side of what we do and we get staff wanting to work with us because we have the social and
environmental credentials.” Diners too are attracted by
the approach. Tere’s a degree of preaching to the converted – those who visit are already on board with the approach – but Brunton is not blind to the challenges facing everybody and takes nothing for granted. “Te majority of the people
come here because they know who we are and they want what we offer, but that doesn’t mean that when people are stretched for cash they can afford to pay what we’re charging people. As restaurants of our kind go, we’re fairly modestly priced, but it’s not McDonald’s, it’s not the café down the road,” she says. “Sometimes people can’t
afford to spend it, regardless of whether they believe in what we’re doing or appreciate the quality of the food. Tat’s the struggle just now, and I get that.”
So how are the scales tipped
– do the joys of running Inver balance out the challenges? “I still love cooking, being in the kitchen, and the bigger picture of hospitality: welcoming people into a place, sharing the edible landscape, and giving them some respite – because we are very good at that,” she says. “Realistically, it’s not
forever. We’re getting older and our families are getting older. I would like to write more. I sometimes think I’d quite like a job where somebody else took the financial risk and they just paid me money,” she laughs. “But I don’t know what that actually means, and I know that food and cooking would always be a part of it. I’m not going to stop working with food, because it’s what I know, and it’s what gives me meaning in life.” At the end of it all, Inver
is about telling stories – it always has been – of a place as well as all the people who are contributing to a meal. “I don’t just mean me, or the cooks in the kitchen and the producers, but the wider community here and beyond, my own family, the things that they’ve introduced me to, and trying to make sense of all of that and be honest with who I am, not excluding influences because they’re not in trend or using things just because they’re in fashion,” she says. However long Inver’s
Brunton’s book is rooted in Inver
story lasts, Brunton is bound to keep telling it straight, representing the land around her, imperfections, misrepresentations and all. It is the only way she knows.
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