WEECOOK
Hayley Wilkes, creator of WEECOOK, began their career as a freelance chef, working with private clients, events, street food companies, and caterers across Scotland. In 2016, the opportunity arose to take on a vacant kitchen in Monifieth, and so the award-winning WEECOOK was born.
This year’s Scottish Food & Drink September campaign centres around the idea that 'Every Bite Tells a Story' so, we caught up with Hayley to find out more about WEECOOK's story, its beginnings, and the importance of supporting Scottish produce.
Scottish Food & Drink September 2026
What’s the story behind WEECOOK, do you remember the moment it went from the initial spark of an idea to reality?
I started WEECOOK in 2011 as a freelance chef after giving up my role as a sous chef in Glasgow restaurant. Prior to that I had worked in various amazing businesses and hotels, including the Hilton and Gleneagles. I’ve always been entrepreneurial and had a dream of being self-employed and having my own business since I worked in a café as a 13-year-old growing up in Wales.
I felt being employed restricted me from some of the exciting changes and opportunities in the industry, and I wanted the freedom to develop and grow. It was around the time of street food really hitting the Glasgow food scene and social media starting to influence our foodie habits. As a freelance chef, I got to work with private clients and event and street food companies and caterers all over Scotland. I did a lot of media work and cooking demos, too, including being on STV. It was a good time. In 2016 an opportunity came up to take on a vacant kitchen in a golf club in Monifieth and the WEECOOK kitchen café and restaurant was born. We had three successful years there then relocated to Barry near Carnoustie where the restaurant went on to win the Scotsman Food & Drink Scran Award for best hidden gem in Scotland!
In 2017, we started dabbling in pies as a side hustle to use up leftovers. The pies started winning awards, namely the BBC Good Food Show, the Scottish Bakers Scotch Pie awards, the British Pie Awards, and then the Guild of Fine Foods Great Taste awards. In 2024 the WEECOOK Fishwife Pie was awarded Fish & Seafood Product of the Year at the Scotland Food & Drink Excellence Awards, and totally unexpectedly went on the win Overall Product of the Year! We were blown away.
Is there a technique, recipe, or process you’ve kept true to since the start?
More of a mantra. It’s a work ethic. If a job's worth doing, it’s worth doing well. It's an attitude that means our team will always give our full energy, excitement and enthusiasm paired with professionalism and passion into any dish or product we create or service we offer.
How does Scottish provenance and the local suppliers you work with shape what you make?
It is vitally important. Our local economy is like a business; it should be a self-sustaining entity with us all making the effort to invest back in what we take out of it. We are a little cog in a community of little cogs in the food and drink industry. Local businesses employ locally, their employees and families use local services and, hopefully, local cafes, shops, markets and pubs, who in return also stock and shop local.
Aside from the economic benefits, there’s quality benefits to using local. You can taste the difference. You can’t beat scoffing a handful of plump juicy Angus strawberries from our local Balhungie berry farm during berry season. We also have Arbroath Smokies from the Fishhoose in Arbroath delivered fresh (still warm) ready to use in our pies. If you’ve never had a warm fresh smokie, I’m very sad to say you are missing out on a little bit of food joy, and I would highly recommend a trip over to this part of Scotland.
The WEECOOK Fishwife Pie is special for sentimental reasons, as it was a pie I developed for my late father who was fish mad! It is also special because of the amazing fresh local and Scottish seafood we make it with. North Sea haddock, natural local smoked haddock, Scottish salmon, and Arbroath smokies.
What have been some of the proudest moments in your business journey so far?
Winning Product of the Year at Scotland Food & Drink’s Excellence Awards 2024 was insane, but winning Fish & Seafood Product of the Year was actually the one that made me content as we know the quality of the local seafood that goes in. We were grateful for the recognition it got. The Fishwife Pie has also won us the Scottish Bakers Ian Nelson Memorial Trophy for Best Speciality Savoury Pie in Scotland – a title we have held four years consecutively. The Fishwife Pie also featured on Channel 4s ‘Aldi's Next Big Thing' show. It was exciting to see Arbroath featured so much on the program, so it gave the local fishmongers a good boost of business, too, with people from all over the UK wanting to buy and learn more about Arbroath smokies!
I am also very proud of our team who made the pies that win the awards but also for the recognition they’ve received for their own efforts like us winning Young Pie Maker of the Year four times at the British Pie Awards. Our former apprentice and sous chef won the Rising Star of the Year Award at the 2024 Courier Food & Drink Awards, too.
Finally, one of the things I am most proud of is being a founding member of our all-new Producers of Angus Markets (PAM). The old Angus markets ceased trading, and producers like me, whose livelihoods are dependent on markets and local markets especially, had no local outlets to trade from. Getting our local Angus markets back was critical and vital to our local economy. I’m proud of PAM and proud to be part of our Appetite for Angus community of food and drink producers and all they strive to do for customers and their communities.
The theme of this year’s Scottish Food & Drink September is ‘Every Bite Tells a Story’. When someone takes a bite of your pies, what story do you want it to tell them?
I want to tell them thank you. I want them to feel our gratitude for coming to find us or supporting us by buying our pies. We want them to not just be satisfied but delighted, so that they come back again and will recommend us.
We want them to know how much we appreciate them by the quality of the ingredients we use and skills and techniques we use to create a pie they will want again and again. We want our customers to know that by them enjoying our pies they are enabling us to continue to do what we love doing.
