A popular Errol café has been granted permission to serve alcohol both indoors and outdoors.
Lass O’Gowrie opened almost three years ago – in the village’s old Victoria Hall – and has grown from strength to strength.
Owners Bob and Ali Abercrombie have been operating on occasional licences at their Carse of Gowrie business for some time and sought to solidify what was in place as well as future proofing the business.
Perth and Kinross Licensing Board unanimously agreed to grant a licence application for Lass O’Gowrie when it met to consider the application on Wednesday, January 15.
Company director and chef Ali Abercrombie told councillors on the board: “Our ambition for the Lass O’Gowrie is to create a reliable and reputable local business that provides excellent food and drink – much of it sourced locally – with everything being made in-house by myself and my team in the kitchen.
“We are not aiming to be a pub and our sales of alcohol are supplementary to the main focus of food.
“That said, we do like the ability to support Scottish drinks manufacturers and many of our customers now know us as a source of beers such as Wasted Degrees in Perthshire and 71 Brewing in Dundee and that’s very much our focus of where we would like our sales of alcohol to be.”
The Licensing Board unanimously agreed to grant the premises licence application subject to mandatory conditions and a local condition requiring a collection policy.
After the meeting, Lass O’Gowrie’s front-of-house manager Bob Abercrombie said: “We’ve been open and trading near enough three years now.
“The building had been empty for about eight years before we took it on. It was a complete blank canvas. We spent a year and a half rebuilding, renovating and creating the café.
“We have always envisaged the area at the back – which is the car park – to be a more multifunctional space and obviously we’re looking to the future of the whole enterprise. We want to have an outdoor area and potential pop-ups with farmers’ markets.”
The licence has also given the green light for special licensed evening events to take place at the venue.
Bob said: “We’d love to go forward and do some more stuff potentially in the evenings, now we have the licence in place for evening events.
“We’ve done a few charity, special occasion events. We have our first evening event – a ticketed Italian themed night – on January 31. I think, at the moment, people need a special occasion to get out of the house.”