FAQs
Donella Fernyhough
Coffee bars retail manager
RESIDENTIAL AND COMMERCIAL SERVICES
Where are you from originally?
I’m from Dornoch in Sutherland, 65 miles south of John o’Groats, long before Madonna made the place famous when she got married there to Guy Ritchie!
Later on I studied at Edinburgh and did a BA in home economics. During the summer I used to work on the Isle of Mull – I was one of the girls who ran the tearoom and baked all the handmade cakes. After graduating, I still hadn’t decided what I wanted to do so I ended up working four different jobs – managing a new restaurant, cooking breakfasts at a hotel, working in a bar, and helping a friend to run the petrol station.
And you used to work as a chef on a private yacht?
Yes, I met someone who skippered a yacht off the west coast of Scotland, doing nautical surveys of the seabed looking for geological movements. It turned out their first chef had just walked out, so they offered me the job if I could start straightaway.
We set sail for the Monarch Isles that very same afternoon! I was only 22 years old, I couldn’t swim, I’d never been in a boat before, and I was seasick every single day for the next four months – I really thought I was going to die. But I was being paid copious amounts of money to be a chef, so I didn’t want to give up.
What convinced you to leave Scotland and move down to Leeds?
It was for love – I met my husband Bernard in the Isle of Mull, and he’s a half-Yorkshireman. I worked in various catering jobs and then I was approached to become the catering manager at Bretton Hall in 1999. In 2001 we merged with the University and I joined Bev Kenny’s team as coffee bar retail manager.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
I really enjoy seeing success in my team. When you look at places like the Ziff café, the maths café, and Café 7 in the Worsley Building, you can see how busy they are, how well the staff respond to customers, and how much they’ve been positively transformed in recent years.
It’s really satisfying when customers tell me how helpful and knowledgeable our staff are, because they’ve all passed national vocational qualifications, all of our cafés have five stars for food hygiene, and we have Customer First accreditation for excellent customer service.
How would your friends describe you?
Very talkative, lively, and caring – they could ring me any time and I would go and help them. But I also like having fun; I’m very young at heart. Age is no barrier, it’s only important if you have cheese or red wine.
What’s your dream job?
I’ve always wanted to be a vet; it’s my biggest regret in life. I was brought up on a dairy farm which my family owned for five generations until 1979, and I was involved in the farm from a very, very young age. The beef went straight to places like the Dorchester and Savoy hotels because it was very good quality.
One day my husband and I plan to go back to Scotland and buy some land with ducks, goats…and anything else I want!
Is it true that you take your pet ducks on holiday with you?
Yes, we all ended up in the Daily Mail, the Yorkshire Post and GMTV about a year ago. What happened is that one of my ducks, Corrie, died very suddenly, and the other two ducks were really grief stricken. I decided to take them on holiday with us to Loch Laggan rather than leaving them behind, and my neighbour wrote a letter to the Yorkshire Post saying he had a nice happy story to counter all the economic doom and gloom.
I also used to look after the ducks that nested near the Rogers Stevens Building a few years ago. There was one little duckling who was rejected by his mum, but sadly he only survived for a week.
What do you like doing in your spare time?
I just love the outdoors, travelling, reading, being back in Scotland with people I care about, and not surrounded by bricks and concrete.
I hear you’re a keen motorsports enthusiast?
My husband used to do a lot of rally driving, but I’ve never been his navigator because it would be the end of a perfect relationship. We’ve still got the rally car tucked away in our garage. It really is like a second mortgage! We went to the World Rally Championships in Catalonia with my Scottish flag.
What’s your most frequently asked question?
‘Do you ever stop talking?’ Yes, I do, I can be very quiet at times.
The other one is: ‘Why did you decide to have ducks as pets?’ It’s because I like their faces and their personalities; they’re very responsive and calming.
Donella Fernyhough was talking to Ruth Taylor.
