The Backstory
Before I begin, I feel it is important to say that this story is deeply personal and incredibly difficult for me to share. This is my story, told from my own recollection and perspective. Others may remember or understand certain events differently.
What makes it even harder to tell is that the collapse of our businesses happened alongside the breakdown of my relationship with Cameron and, with it, the separation of our family. It has been an incredibly difficult year, and I have thought deeply about how to tell this story honestly while still protecting my family’s privacy and wellbeing. The personal and professional parts of what happened are so deeply intertwined that it is almost impossible to speak truthfully about one without acknowledging the other.
I believe that sharing my own truth — as I experienced and lived it — is essential if I am to shine a light on the deeper realities of the industry itself, and on the human cost of a way of working and living that many have come to accept as normal.
I hope sharing my story will help others reflect on their own - Life is precious.
— Jade
The move to street food…
The original blurb
on the website…
“Street food was our first step in bringing you our Junk in real life. We’d made a pretty good recipe website together that we were super proud of, but ultimately we live, eat and breathe making and serving the dinner! We really wanted to break into the street food scene but with little money or equipment and no place to cook we were struggling with what to do next.”
Reality…
For me, this was not untrue, but it was a polished and carefully simplified version of what had really brought us there. Passion was part of it, certainly, but the decision to begin was driven just as much by necessity — by the need to create something of our own when the life we were living had become increasingly uncertain, lonely and unsustainable. What appeared from the outside to be the natural pursuit of an idea was, in reality, an attempt to find a way forward when I had already been pushed beyond breaking point.
For years, I minimised the truth of it through laughter, telling people that Junk began because I had given Cameron an ultimatum: quit your job, or I will leave. It sounded dramatic and almost comical when reduced to a punchline, but the raw reality behind it was far more painful. I was a full-time mother on maternity leave, raising our child while my partner worked close to one hundred hours a week. We barely saw one another. Our family life had been consumed by the demands of an industry that expected everything and left very little behind. I could no longer keep living inside that reality.
I remember sitting in the car park beneath our flat, weeping as I asked Cameron to trust me. We had less than £800 in our account and I had no real plan beyond the conviction that we needed life to change. I believed together we could change our lives. A supper club or street food seemed like our best chance.
He did trust me. He quit his job and followed me into a half-formed idea — part necessity, part dream — that I believed, somehow, we could make work.
And, for a long time, we did. We were an incredible team.
Beginning of Junk Street Food
Some of you may already know that we got our first real break at The Pitt, back when it was still on Pitt Street. We owe a great deal to them. The team were incredibly kind and encouraged us to apply for the Scottish Street Food Awards. Considering The Pitt had been our first ever gig, we laughed at the idea at first, but later thought, f*ck it — what have we got to lose?
Cam wrote a brilliantly sh*te spiel about doing it all for the love of potatoes and, somehow, we were invited back a month or so later to take part in the competition.
Cam reached out to his good friend Stu, whom he had worked closely with before and knew to be an exceptionally talented — and thoroughly “staunch” — chef. Stu handed in his notice on the spot and joined us a week later. Without really realising it, we had just hired our first team member. We all put our heads together and created the kind of menu we thought street food should be. Then, through Cam and Stu’s talent as chefs, they brought it to life.
Within that same month, I gave birth to our second child, Aila. A few weeks later I was plating and serving our Junk at the Scottish Street Food Awards with my newborn baby strapped to my chest, slipping away between queues to breastfeed her and change the maternity pad in my underwear — before returning to serve the crowds waiting to order from the newly crowned Scottish Street Food Champions.
Call it naïve, or perhaps stupid, but looking back, it should have been a warning of the imbalance that was yet to come — particularly ironic given that the entire reason for starting our own business was to create the balance our lives had previously lacked.
Overnight Success
Our inbox seemed to fill almost overnight with invitations to events across the country. It was inzcredible, surreal and completely overwhelming in equal measure. One minute, we were trying to work out whether anyone would even want to eat our food; the next, we were being asked to trade at events we had only ever heard of.
That summer became a blur. We were constantly writing menus, prepping at all hours and turning our spare bedroom into a makeshift larder, with boxes of ingredients stacked from floor to ceiling. We somehow squeezed a gazebo into the back of a little Mini and dragged it from one event to the next, or found ourselves wedged into borrowed vans and makeshift shacks, trying to turn whatever space we had been given into something resembling a kitchen.
It was chaotic and exhausting, but we were absolutely buzzing. We were full of energy, passion and enthusiasm, fuelled by the feeling that people genuinely believed in what we were doing. After spending so long wondering whether the idea would ever become anything, suddenly seeing people queue for our food, invite us to events and get excited about Junk felt fucking incredible.
Amongst others, we traded alongside some unbelievably talented street food vendors at events including The Neighbourgood Market, the Royal Highland Show, Edinburgh City 7s and the Edinburgh Food Festival at The Fringe. In between them, we travelled down to London to compete in the British Street Food Awards — and, we won.
That should probably have been the point where we stopped, caught our breath and allowed ourselves to feel proud. Instead, we borrowed a whack of money to buy a street food van, only to decide it was not quite suitable. So, rather than doing anything remotely sensible, we borrowed even more money and decided we might as well try opening a restaurant. By day, we were writing menus, creating artwork, prepping food and setting up for the next gig. By night, we were writing business plans, searching for properties and trying to work out how we could turn all this momentum into something permanent.
At the end of the summer, Cam and Stu travelled to Germany for the European Street Food Awards, joined by Cam’s best pal Scott, who kindly agreed to go along - bringing the language skills, drivers license and an un-canny Scottish hospitality charm no one would have expected. I could say they won against all odds, but that would not be true. We knew how good the food was, we knew we would win — and we did. They came home European Street Food Champions.
