Zoe Cooper has experienced great highs and extraordinary lows in more than two decades in the Tayside hospitality industry.
Zoe, now 46, grew up in the Angus village of Inverkeilor and after some youthful dabbling with drink, drugs and partying, she worked at De Vito’s nightclub and the Santana Italian restaurant (now Azzurro), both in Arbroath.
She later moved to Dundee, where she worked for The Globe (now Molly Malones), suffered “hell” serving food while in charge of short-lived Dundee pub Pivo, had to confiscate photos of naked women at lapdancing bar Liberty and learned to “cook out of a cupboard” at the Art Bar.
Zoe, who lives near Dundee’s Wellgate Centre, then endured 120-hour weeks and hostile locals while in charge of the Inverpark Hotel in Arbroath.
In this feature, the first of two parts, Zoe recounts the excitement and drama of her first 31 years in some of Tayside’s most notable – and notorious – establishments.
The second part resumes her story to cover a rollercoaster period in Perth and beyond, including a risky but successful transformation of city centre hotspot Twa Tams, and the restaurant venture that ended in her bankruptcy.
Part one is in the following sections:
- Nightmare child
- Summer school and record-label
- Pub food ‘hell’ and strip bar
- Hotel sabotage and 120-hour weeks
Nightmare child
When Zoe Cooper was three years old, her parents Ian and Ann-Marie, purchased a large five-bedroom house on the Main Road in Inverkeilor.
A year later the couple split up. “It left my mum with a massive house and a huge mortgage,” Zoe recalls. “She had two children, myself and Jay.”
Ann-Marie converted the house into a tea room and called it Homewood, which she later sold to Gordon and Maria Watson, who turned it into the award-winning Gordon’s Restaurant.
Zoe says Inverkeilor was “a fabulous place to grow up”. She regularly walked two miles after school to have fun at Lunan Bay.
She says she was one of only three girls at “tiny” Inverkeilor Primary School.
“Other girls came and went but from Primary 1 to Primary 7 it was just me and the two Lindas.
“There were 11 boys there but I was a tomboy so it was good for me.”
One of her classmates was Garry Watson, who took over as the chef at Gordon’s after his father’s death in 2016.
‘It was mainly MDMA at raves’
As a pupil at Arbroath Academy, Zoe admits she was a “nightmare child”.
“I loved school but in about the second or third year, when I was 13 to 14, I just stopped going. I started hanging out with not the best of people.”
She left school with a Higher in English but admits: “I didn’t do as well as I probably should have.”
In her late teens Zoe dabbled with drink and drugs. “It was mainly MDMA at raves and that kind of stuff – I was a proper raver,” she says.
“I always went to the Rhumba night that used to be put on at the Bally’s nightclub run by Ally Bally, the DJ.”
When she was 16, Zoe’s mother Ann-Marie had a house rebuilt in Maule Street that she converted into a bed and breakfast.
Thirty years on, at the age of 65, she still runs Maulesbank Guest House with her husband Jack Rase, a former US navy serviceman who now works for the Naval Criminal Investigative Service.
The couple met while Ann-Marie was working at The Links nightclub in Montrose.
‘Kind of a detox’
Aged 17, Zoe was sent to Bergen on the west coast of Norway to stay with her father Ian, who had moved to Scandinavia and was working in the oil industry for Otis.
“I stayed there for a year and it was kind of a detox – at least for a little while.
“I went to an international school. There was a girl from Canada, boy from Iceland, girl from Chile, boy from Russia and another boy from England. We were this little group.
“I seem to excel in a small classroom and definitely did better.”
A year later, Zoe returned to Scotland with a desire to improve her grades and earn some money.
She returned to Arbroath Academy where she took classes with pupils from the year below.
Aged 18, she started jobs at De Vito’s nightclub and the Santana Italian restaurant (now Azzurro), both in Arbroath.
At Santana she worked under Orlando Marcantonio. “He was a brilliant man,” Zoe recalls. “He was the singing chef and would serve the food and then start serenading customers.
“Before that I worked for a little while with a horrible woman in a shop, just a few weeks, and she said ‘you will never do anything in customer service’.
“So maybe that is what has inspired me to serve the public!”
Summer school and record-label
Zoe then moved to Dundee where she attended summer school to guarantee a place at Dundee university’s English and psychology degree course.
She ended up dropping out after “it made me hate reading”.
Zoe adds: “I made the mistake of doing joint honours. I should really have done one or the other because it was a lot of work and I wasn’t enjoying it.”
But she remained dedicated to work. In Dundee she was employed by her uncle Jack Cooper, who owned The Globe, which later changed its name to Molly Malone’s.
“I loved working there,” Zoe says. “I dropped out of university and worked there full-time.
“Down the road from The Globe there used to be a music shop Rockpile Records, run by fantastic guy called Ian Walker. He passed away not long ago.
“Ian would coincide his breaks with mine and we would sit and talk about music constantly.
“He said I would make a fantastic sound engineer and I was like ‘I don’t even know what that is’.”
‘I lived with some great musicians’
Interest piqued, Zoe headed to Scotland’s largest city to study what would ultimately be an HND in audio engineering at North Glasgow College.
In the first year she wrote a drama that won the Trades House Award in 1998, but later focused on audio engineering and ran record company NGC Records.
“I was living next to Savalas recording studios in Glasgow,” Zoe says. “I lived with some great musicians and the amount of bands that would come through the house was amazing, though you weren’t so star-struck when they had stolen your milk at 7am.”
These bands included Spiritualized, and she also lived with a guitarist from Stiltskin.
The course culminated in the creation of a 28-song album called Funky Geek, which comprised songs from 20 acts.
Zoe says: “I managed to get Hilton Grove, a music business department, to agree to make 2,000 copies of the album for just £1,000 including artwork and mastering.
“I sat for two weeks pre mastering. The college flew me down to London and got the album made and we did the album launch.
“We did gigs as well to publicise and make money. Throughout the whole time that NGC records had been going, it was at a loss. But our year made £7,000. I absolutely loved it.”
Zoe had high hopes for a career in audio engineering and took an internship at SEC but there was a lack of paid positions available.
Pub food ‘hell’ and strip bar
So it was back to Dundee and the hospitality trade, but this time with much more responsibility than before.
The Globe had been sold to Belhaven and was being managed by Zoe’s cousin, Tracey Cooper, who is currently in charge of the Fisherman’s Tavern in Broughty Ferry.
Belhaven had bought Slattery’s Irish bar on Westport and had converted it to a Czech bar called Pivo.
“My cousin’s boss asked her if she knew anyone with a music background to run it,” says Zoe, who was 25 at the time.
“At my interview I said ‘I know about service but not the admin – but if you give me the opportunity I will do a job for you’.”
She got the job but Zoe found it tough.
“At that time, the year 2000, we had lots of pubs in the Westport, all traditional pubs,” she says.
“Slattery’s was a great Irish bar but they ripped out a kitchen for seven seats. I thought ‘you can’t open a trendy bar in this area without food’ so at the last minute they said I had to do food from behind the bar.
“We had a microwave and The Globe had to cook me stuff off site to give to me.
“The food side was hell but I loved the job.
“We had a ball but there was no way that place was going to make money. The capacity was 90 people and we didn’t have a functioning kitchen.”
After three years in charge Zoe called it quits, and joining her out of the exit door was all of her workers.
“I had some fantastic staff who I am still friends with now, and they are still friends with each other, which is a good indicator,” she says.
“When I resigned my entire pub resigned.”
‘Dancing was easier than getting into student debt’
If running Pivo presented her with a cooking challenge, Zoe’s next assignment would serve up something very different.
She became the manager of Liberty, a lapdancing bar in St Andrews Lane, where she was often confronted with welfare issues – both for herself and the female dancers.
Zoe was always dressed strictly from head to toe but that did not stop her from having to rebuff one chancer who offered her £4,000 for a dance.
And then there were the dancers themselves.
“They were brilliant,” she says. “A lot of them were students and dancing was easier than getting into student debt.
“When I first arrived it was hard work getting to know the girls because, despite it being good money, the other side of it does make them very cautious.”
‘There was just me and 40 guys in a room’
Zoe’s responsibilities towards her staff were highlighted on one night in particular.
“One of the girls was doing a show in front of two stag dos,” she remembers. “Part of my job was to watch private dances to make sure nothing was untoward but I also have to announce when someone is coming on to do their show.
“One of the girls was doing a show and I just see ‘flash flash’ but you’re not allowed to take pictures.”
This was before mobile phones had cameras.
Zoe adds: “So I cut the music and sent the girl backstage, meaning there was just me and 40 guys in a room.
“I said on the microphone ‘right, we’re not doing anything until you give me those cameras, please’.
“It was like being a school teacher. I stood there and said ‘you’ll get no drink, no shows or anything else unless you get rid of the cameras’.
“So they did. The groom-to-be and best man came up to me and said ‘we are really sorry but we have so many other pictures’.
“So I later went to a developer and got the photos not of naked women printed and I sent them over to the person who owned the camera. That’s above and beyond for customer service!”
‘The food was spectacular – for being in a cupboard’
The Liberty gig lasted 18 months before a stint managing The Art Bar on Dundee’s Perth Road after her cousin Tracey took on the lease.
The bar was, and remains, connected to Duncan of Jordanstone College.
“I loved it there,” Zoe says. “This is where I learnt to cook out of a cupboard – you couldn’t even close the door behind you.
“There was a fabulous chef who worked there and he taught me how to make amazing soup in the microwave. The food we did was spectacular – for being in a cupboard.”
The job was cut short when Zoe was 27, in 2003, when Tracey gave up the lease after being offered the 19th Hole Hotel in Carnoustie.
Hotel sabotage and 120-hour weeks
Zoe then turned her attention to something much grander – owning a hotel.
She became aware of the availability of the Inverpark Hotel (since demolished) on Bank Street and thought purchasing it “seemed like a nice idea”.
“I needed a job and to find some purpose.” In the same breath, however, Zoe reflects that “it was not the wisest thing to do”.
Why?
“I found out how nasty my hometown could be,” she says. “Not everybody, because I had some amazing loyal customers, but people perceived me to be loaded because I had my own hotel.
“There was no income so I effectively took out a mortgage. You don’t do this because you’re rich.”
One experience stuck out.
“I was the chef and one of my best friends was working at the front of the house. She came into he kitchen and said ‘these guys are being so horrible and I may actually cry’.
“She said they were complaining about everything – they’re just just moan, moan moan.
“This continues and it gets to the desserts and she is feeling attacked by them so she turns to them and says ‘I’m sorry, but who do you think I am? I am a waitress, I just work here’.
“And they said ‘I am so sorry, I thought you were the owner’. They even admitted that was why they were doing it.”
Someone also reported Zoe for serving alcohol to two police officers who, she says, had popped in to have a look around.
“This was hilarious because the police officer in question is teetotal and has never had a drink in his life,” She says. “That’s just nasty.
“The other side is that there were some amazing customers who were so loyal.”
‘I didn’t set foot outside the building for four months’
The hotel building housed four bedrooms, a seven-seater bar, a 12-person private dining area and fine-dining space for 30.
Zoe employed eight staff. “When it was all full it was mental,” she says. “All eight staff would be on at one time.
“It got ridiculous. I was doing 120 hours a week but I didn’t even know there were 120 hours in one week to work.
“I got up early to prep for breakfast so started work at 6am and finished at 2am/3am. I had burnt myself out.
“It’s mad because one of my friends recently told me he loved the bar so for him the whole experience at that time was fantastic.
“Even now he says ‘do you remember that night with such-and-such band’ and I would say ‘no’ because I was that stressed out that I just have a mental block.
“He also said ‘remember when you didn’t leave the building for four months?’ and I’m like ‘no’. I didn’t set foot outside the building for four months.
“My mum is a chef so was working there as well but it was just so stressful.
“There is an aspect, when I look back at it, that I don’t recognise myself as a person. It’s like a complete detachment.”
‘We lost a fortune on it’
If running the Inverpark was difficult, so was selling it.
After three years Zoe wanted to call it quits and accepted a £350,000 offer by a property developer.
“He was buying it for that in principle so we shut everything down and got rid of the staff,” Zoe says.
“Then he said the company that was buying it had gone bankrupt so offered £50,000 less, thinking that technically it is legal.
“But he had never met my mother! She went ‘no’, that’s not happening. So my brother took out a loan to buy out the debt of the hotel.
“He released me from there and my mum ran it for 10 years and wouldn’t let anyone who was associated with that particular gentleman buy it.
“Eventually she sold it to a developer from Aberdeen and it is now flats. We lost a fortune on it but my mum is a very principled woman.”
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