By Nicola Walker
Jane Ross is certainly a well-loved character in the Edinburgh bar scene and it’s easy to see why. When I caught up with her at The Mother Superior in Edinburgh, the first bar that she opened, before long I felt like she was an old friend. Jane exudes Irish charm and is clearly a storyteller.
She also has a passion for whisky and divulged that she has tried around 15,000 whiskies in the past seven years but added, “I’ve obviously not had a full dram of them all, I still have a functioning liver!”
As well as tasting a lot of whisky, Jane has also just opened two new bars, The Powder Room and The False Widow, as well as co-running her Edinburgh Fringe show Whisky & Witches.
After moving to Edinburgh from Dublin in 2009 Jane started her first bar job in the Corn Exchange. She laughs, “Because I was Irish, they presumed I’d worked in a bar before. I remember the first drink I ever served, and I was terrified. It was Burns Night, and a 70-year-old Scotsman asked me for a Glenmorangie. I honestly thought he was speaking a different language. I had to go to a colleague, and I was just repeating it over and over in his accent because I’d never heard of it before.”
She continues, “Hospitality just looked fun, and I wanted to be a part of it. The Corn Exchange gave me a really good foundation as you got a taste of every aspect of the bar trade from weddings to conferences and concerts.”
After two years, Jane then moved to the Point Hotel but quickly discovered that hotels weren’t for her. She explains, “I think it was the uniform, it just didn’t feel natural, but I still loved talking to the customers and hearing people’s stories. So, I went for a job with The Black Cat in 2013, a bar that specialised in whisky, and that was what propelled me into the whisky industry.”
Jane worked her way up to General Manager at The Black Cat and stayed there for seven years whilst also completing two University degrees – one in Business Studies and one in Architectural Technology and Engineering. She also developed a great relationship with owner Chris Miles, and it was Chris that actually found her The Mother Superior unit in January 2020.
She says, “I loved working for Chris, but I wanted to do more events and work for myself. I told him about my vision for the pub – I knew I wanted to be down in Leith because of the community there. It reminded me of home and I decided to go for it!
“Billy Ross, the landlord there, took a chance on me and gave me, a first time owner, the lease and I feel very lucky to have him as a landlord. He is incredibly supportive and we’re now good friends.
“We got the keys in April 2020 and completely refurbed it during lockdown. It isn’t entirely the vision I originally had for the pub, but I wouldn’t change it now as it was built with love because my friends helped me build it and their graft is in the seats and the walls.
“We opened on the 17th of July 2020 and then the second lockdown happened. It was a fight for survival, but I refused to let any of my staff go. I did takeaway every day which started off so slowly to the point I thought I was going to get rigor mortis! However, I kept at it, and we went from £40 a day to taking £4500 pounds on New Years Eve. I sold about 80 litres of mulled wine that day by myself and I remember walking home was a struggle!
“We managed to keep it afloat and, looking back, I actually think the takeaway business was our biggest help. It brought the community to my door. We had some banter, they said they would come back, and they did, and then they kept coming back. It was exactly what I thought Leith would be like, a hub of all these different people who are just looking for a good time and nice drinks.
“Things are now great, but we’ve had a lot to contend with in our first years of business, not just covid, but the tram works too, and we had a massive Scottish Water leak in our basement events space which closed it for a year. In fact, I think my whole bar-owning career has been a cost-of-living crisis!”
This clearly hasn’t deterred Jane though as she turned over £650,000 in The Mother Superior last year and has just opened her two new bars in Leith – The Powder Room, a retro funk live music bar, and The False Widow, a sustainable bar named after the first witch on record in Ireland, Dame Alice Kittler. Jane says, “The success of The Mother Superior has funded the new bars. However, I never expected to take on another bar so quickly, let alone two!
She explains, “Billy, approached me and said he thought I could give the staff and the pubs the attention that they needed. I was able to take on the new bars because my existing bar managers are amazing. They stepped up and allowed me to concentrate on the new bars. Bartending is a community, so they often ask each other first before they come to me.
“The trade is in such a funny place at the minute though. There’s a lot of high-quality bars in Edinburgh, from big groups to little independents, and the talent is unreal. But the rising costs are crushing some great pubs that were previously paying the living wage. It’s taking away the ability to let people have hospitality as a career, which is quite sad.
“There’s only a certain amount that pubs can keep putting prices up which keeps it viable for a customer as well. The Scottish Government needs to do something soon to help the bar trade.
“However, we have been lucky with our two new bars. We’ve already tripled the takings in both of these bars, which is incredible.”
Another of Jane’s passion projects is her successful Whisky & Witches show which she started in 2023 with Danish musician Christine Kammerer.
Jane shares, “We do whisky tastings with accompanying music in line with the folklore, the link to the land, and the villainization of women in the alcohol industry. Christine and I both wanted to do something fun with whisky – like a musical. Luckily, she’s an incredible singer, because I’m not! We’ve done eight shows during the fringe for two years and we’ve also done it at Feis Isle, Belfast Whisky Week and twice in Denmark.”
Jane always knew she wanted to be part of the whisky community. She explains, “The more I drank it, the more I loved it. Storytelling is a very Irish thing with the seanchaís’ and I love talking about whisky to people and discussing the mythical and mystical stuff. Terms like Angels Share and Devils Cut are basically just a magical way of saying your profit is going into the air!”
One thing that annoys Jane though is when people doubt her knowledge because of the way she looks. She shared, “After nearly every Whisky and Witches show I have someone come up to me to try and mansplain something I have said about whisky. However, women in the whisky industry just now are doing everything they possibly can to change perception. I’m also lucky to have worked with many incredible men in the whiskey industry that advocate for you. We’ve got a lot of female customers in our pubs who now drink whisky. My personal favourites are smoky, peaty, cask strength whisky, particularly from Islay.”
“When I first started getting into whisky the industry was not always kind. For instance, I had whisky reps that would come in and ask to speak to the male manager. This is getting better, but I think it’s a generational thing that we will grow out of naturally. When I was up for the Deanston Whisky Guru Award at this year’s Scottish Bar and Pub Awards the majority of the finalists were women. That’s incredible to see and Gillian Kirkland, who won, is a force to be reckoned with!”
Jane has really set out to change perceptions, even about whisky brands. She says, “There are some whisky brands out there that have a stigma attached to them, mainly because they are found on supermarket shelves, so at the last Whisky and Witches show we used undisclosed bottles to challenge people’s bias. I always think of whisky as a little family – you might not like the man, the dog or the brother, but there could be cool Aunt!”
I was also keen to learn about the other great loves of Jane’s life which she tells me are her husband, Nick, her Jack Russell, Millie, and a recently discovered hobby of Irish dancing! She laughs, “Sometimes I get the urge to feel more Irish – because obviously I’m not Irish enough! At 35, I’m about 10 years older than everyone in the class, but I’m honestly a natural – I should have been Irish dancing my whole life!
“I do love Ireland, but Edinburgh is my home now. I love Leith, I love the community here and I think the bar trade over here is in a different league.”
Jane met her husband Nick in 2017, when she swiped right on Tinder, and they’ve now been married two years. She says, “It was a month after my mam died and he was this little breath of fresh air. He was just up for anything fun and different. He’s a carpenter and when I told him I wanted to open a bar he just told me to go for it! I don’t think he realised how much work he’d have to do on the pubs though!”
When I went to interview Jane, Nick was also there, working hard on the refurbishment in the downstairs bar at The Mother Superior. As they gave me the guided tour Jane added, “We can use this an overflow space if it’s not booked out as the bar upstairs is now so busy. We have also rented out our kitchen to King of Feasts and we’re doing an event in October called ‘Screen and Scran’. We are showing the Ralph Fiennes movie ‘The Menu’ and serving the 10 courses from the movie as you watch it.”
So, what else does Jane have planned for the future? She smiles, “I would like to take on more pubs, but we need to let everything settle for a minute. I’d also love to open a wedding venue one day and a bar with Cullen, the General Manager in The Mother Superior. He’s great for the trade and really is what a bar manager should be. He cares about the staff as much as I do.
“Young people are the future and the backbone of the trade. There is so much talent out there, and I love encouraging that. I like to hire people with very little experience to give them a chance. You can teach them, they’re enthusiastic and that way they can find their passion and niche in the bar trade.”
That is exactly what Jane has done. She has found her passion and niche in the bar trade and from there she is set on creating great things. I left The Mother Superior looking forward to catching up again for a dram soon to hear more of her wonderful tales from the world of whisky.