Little by Name Big on Reputation

Vibrant, welcoming, friendly, gorgeous looks and tastes amazing … no we are not talking about our owner Justin as hard as that is to believe we are talking about how customers describe the venue, staff and food at LITTLE SOHO JORDANHILL. After meeting Nicola the owner and sampling the food and meeting the staff we couldn’t agree more. We spoke to Nicola to find out more about what makes the venue so loved by customers and what makes it tick.

Little Soho is a small family run restaurant in the heart of Jordanhill which offers a mixture of Italian food with some Scottish twists and also plenty of other options like burgers, small plates and sides. It was previously owned by my family Michelle and Michael Bergson and I took over during lockdown as at that time they had decided to close Little Soho down. The restaurant had become a huge part of my life as I had been a manager for them and

I had formed many relationships with our amazing local customers, so during lockdown I made the decision to take it on, which was daunting as who knew what was going to happen when things opened back up again. Anyway, I took the leap and have never looked back. What a place this has become!

What I think makes us stand out are the two most importants things, our food and our staff. To me serving customers is not a job, it’s a pleasure and the same goes with all the staff. We love to go above and beyond to make people feel welcome and also get to know customers, old and new, and form a friendship with them. As we are a small family business I also think people appreciate the love and hard work that goes into it. Next our food is amazing, we try to cater for all tastes and dietary preferences. We have a great team of chefs who have been with us from the start, who know how the kitchen works and how to produce amazing fresh food all day every day. What I think also adds to the experience is our decor and music. We are constantly carrying out improvements (with many more to come) to the decor and the place is looking fabulous, so cosy and welcoming, we have recently installed new neons that have really changed the look of the place and I think customers really appreciate that we are always trying to improve the look. And finally our music - the amount of customers that comment on our soundtracks is great as we have such a mixture of age groups and everyone always loves the music. We are always faced with challenges but manage to get through them whatever is thrown at us. When we were closed down again after the first lockdown we turned the restaurant into a successful takeaway and I think that also was a huge turning point for us. People who had never tried us before soon became regular customers and with the way things were, when they were coming to collect orders we would have a wee chat and often we were the only people they had contact with, so that formed more relationships and in return when we opened up, more support, more new customers and more business. The local community has been incredibly supporting us. Customer experience is extremely important to us, there would be no point in doing what we do unless we wanted the best experience for our customers. From the minute they walk into the restaurant we want customers to feel welcome and special and we want that to continue throughout their time in the restaurant . We want every customer to be leaving the restaurant having had the best experience possible. Some customers don’t like a chat, other customers love a chat and that is something the staff have to gauge. We are by no means perfect and mistakes can happen but we always try to deal with things with the best possible outcome and everyone is happy. The proposed Deposit Return Scheme is something we will need to deal with if it comes to fruition. We will maybe be looking at changing a lot of our bottles especially our soft drinks to cans or draught. This is something I will be looking into more in the near future.

I would just like to say how lucky and blessed we are to have made the business so successful and busy. We have one of the best ratings on Opentable and we are getting busier every week, It is hard work and sometimes I could run a mile, but it is a pleasure to be in this industry and to make people’s experience of visiting our restaurant a great one. We are continuing to try to grow and have recently opened a takeaway in Yoker, Little Soho To Go which is also looking to turn into a great success. We are extremely lucky to have had this opportunity and so thankful to Michelle and Michael to have been given this start with the business. I love Little Soho, it is such a special wee place!