09/10/2026
A little bit of a long winded update and a little help!
As most of you know, this year we brought our two businesses together under one roof and one name. The idea was simple. Reduce our overheads, become more efficient and ultimately build a business that’s sustainable for the long term.
For the most part, it’s worked! But one thing we’ve realised is that there’s still a bit of confusion as to exactly what we are now. Some people think No.9 has disappeared and we’re now just a restaurant. Others think Blake’s has disappeared and we don’t really do “meals” anymore. Neither is true!
We still do coffee, sit in or takeaway. We still do brunch and lunch. We still do dinner. We still have the lounge, whether that’s for a coffee in the daytime or a drink in the evening or vice versa. It’s all still here. It’s just under one name and one roof now, that being No.9 which we did toy with changing to see if it would make it easier! New name, new look and all that jazz!
But there is one area where we know we need to do better and that’s evenings. We can’t be ignorant to that fact! Since the move, our evening trade hasn’t been where we need or want it to be. There’s no point pretending otherwise, so rather than sitting back, doing nothing and hoping it changes, we’re going to change what we’re doing.
And we’d really like your help!
What would you like to see on our evening menu? What kind of food do you think Stornoway is missing? What would make you think, “Let’s just go out for dinner tonight”? We have some ideas of our own, but we want to hear yours too. If you’re not comfortable commenting, message us with anything!
Different food? Smaller plates? Bigger plates? More casual dining? Family options? Better midweek deals? Something Stornoway simply doesn’t have? Tell us. Even if you’ve never eaten with us before, we’d like to know. Or if you tried us and vowed you wouldn’t return, tell us why!
Another reality we can’t ignore is the cost of living. Going out for dinner has become a luxury. When a meal for two can easily creep towards £100, it becomes something you save for a birthday, anniversary or Saturday night. We do not want to be somewhere you only think about for a special occasion. We want you to be able to decide on a random Thursday that you can’t be bothered cooking, come in, have some really good food, a drink, enjoy yourself and leave without feeling like you’ve broken the bank.
For us, that means having a serious look at our evening offering, our menu and our pricing because affordable prices only work if we have enough bums on seats.
Hospitality is having a very difficult time at the moment. Businesses large and small are closing, and from the outside it can be difficult to understand why somewhere charging £15–£20 for a meal can still struggle to make the numbers work. So, in the spirit of transparency, here are just some of the costs involved in keeping our doors open:
Rent, Wages, holiday pay, pensions and employer contributions, Utilities, Card processing, Till & kitchen display system, Booking system, Commercial waste collection, Cleaning, hygiene & disposable products, Insurance, Banking fees, accounting, alarm monitoring, stationery, repairs, WiFi, phone, maintenance, VAT and all the other little bits!
And that’s before we buy a single steak, coffee bean, potato, bottle of w**e or pint of milk.
We’re not sharing this looking for sympathy, and we’re certainly not complaining about paying them. We want to pay them.
We want to employ our team and pay them properly. We want a good booking system that makes it easy for you to book online without having to phone (phone anxiety and all that). We want proper equipment in our kitchen. We want good hygiene standards and everything else that comes with running a hospitality business. We just need enough people coming through the doors to justify those costs.
And rather than responding by simply putting prices up and up, we’d much rather find a way to make eating out more accessible, get more people through the doors and create an evening offering that people actually want to use regularly.
We want this place to be busy, we want the lounge busy, we want our team to have a secure place to work. And ultimately, we want to still be here serving Stornoway for many years to come.
So this isn’t a doom-and-gloom post. Quite the opposite. It’s us saying we want to make the necessary changes!
