About Jessie Mac's

Who Are We?

We’re a team of three – Dot the manager and owner, Mairi the assistant manager and Brenda the other owner. Tufty the dog is the brains behind everything.

Dot - Manager & Owner

Dot’s usually the person on the end of the phone or email.

She’s been running the place for 10 years so she generally knows what she’s talking about.

Usually sporting a big smile, especially if she’s about to pop out for a cheeky pint or to stage a raid on Chattan Tearoom next door.

Her background is the NHS and she’s helping out at Track & Trace as well as delivering meals to the community during Covid.

Mairi - Assistant Manager

Usually found sorting laundry or playing with the guests’ pets. Super helpful and patient (even with us).

There’s nothing that Mairi doesn’t know about public transport services from here to Dundee and is our smart phone expert.

Tufty - The Boss

Brains of the outfit. A border terrier in her prime, she serves as the first option for food recycling and will eat absolutely anything except Cocopops.

Generally kept out of the way as she’s not great with other dogs but adores people.

Has been known to miraculously appear under a guest’s table and imply that she’s never fed. Lies, all lies.

Brenda - Other Owner

The business mind and resident greenie. Great at ideas, a human whirlwind when it comes to cleaning and is seldom seen standing still.

If you hear traditional music wafting around the house, she’s probably having a sneaky tune on the whistle or mandolin.

Has been known to appear under guests’ tables along with the dog, begging for chocolate.

What's Different About Us?

We set Jessie Mac’s up in September 2011 with the aim of making it the best and greenest small hostel in Scotland. We bought a traditional B&B with the aim of turning it into a hostel. Guests asked if we could come up with a hybrid – self-catering facilities but still offering breakfasts plus a mixture of shared dorms, private doubles and family rooms. So we did.

BUT, Covid has meant that we need to change how we operate temporarily, to ensure that we provide the safest environment possible. So we’ve had to move to completely self catering and also reduce the number of guests staying at any one time in order to give you all as much space as possible. To help make that happen, we’ve given you our catering kitchen as well as your own big guest kitchen.

Our Ethics - check out our Green Tourism video below - or on youtube JM Green Tourism Video

Staff – we are a Living Wage Employer, we employ local staff, contractors and suppliers wherever possible.
Community – we’re involved with the local tourist association, volunteer at the Arts Centre, sponsor the local highland games, donate free bed nights to local charities and work really hard to buy everything locally.
Environment – we are very resource efficient, having almost halved the amount of energy that we use per guest and now recycling 90% of our/your waste. Lots more information below.
Purchasing – we are a Fairtrade business, buying only fairly traded tea, coffee, sugar and bananas for breakfasts and rooms. We have won a Taste Our Best award recognising that the majority of the produce that we use is Scottish.

Green Business

Sustainability is very important to how we run Jessie Mac's. We try to minimise our/your impact on the environment and support the local economy wherever we can. Here are our environmental policy telling you what our priorities are, an action plan tells you of our future plans and a report of progress to date:

Green Awards

One of the things that we’re most proud of is attaining Gold level in the Green Tourism Business Scheme. This ensures that we carefully manage waste, energy, transport, biodiversity, chemical storage, links with our community and our purchasing decisions. As part of this we calculate how many tonnes of CO2 we produce every year (16 tonnes) and then donate a free bed night for each tonne. to locally based conservation charities such as Scottish Wildlife Trust. It’s really hard to get and maintain gold level, so we ask guests to play their part by helping us to be resource efficient when they stay.

In November 2014 we won a national award for how we manage our business’ environmental impacts. We still haven’t come back down to Earth but then we’re constantly trying to get better at what we do.

Continuous Improvement

We’re constantly trying to make Jessie Mac’s more resource efficient and more comfortable for our guests. The big things that we’re working on towards 2020 are: