More than just a place to enjoy good, fresh, home cooking and baking, The Hive has become a much-loved hub in the heart of picturesque Garlieston. Dumfries & Galloway Life’s reigning Café of the Year, it has also won a new army of fans since being featured in the new series of BBC Scotland’s Jules and Greg’s Wild Swim. Carol Hogarth reports
When mother and daughter Kerry and Amye Lloyd fulfilled their long-held ambition to open a coffee shop on the sea front in Garlieston, little did they know it would become so much more.
The Hive has become “a bit of a hub”, according to Amye, with regular groups of locals enjoying a warm and welcoming place to meet with great coffee and fresh, home cooking and baking.
“Local people say that you can count on seeing someone you know in The Hive and some even say it has been life-changing for them, to have somewhere to go.”
Since opening in 2022, The Hive has become a regular haunt for cyclists, wild swimmers, mums with babies and toddlers, groups of friends, and visitors who return to Garlieston and its surrounding area year after year.
Kerry, her husband Andy and their family, who are from the West Midlands, understand that long distance connection with the village, Andy’s parents having owned a house in Garlieston for many years.
“Andy has been coming to Garlieston since he was a teenager and we used to come up here as much as we could to chill out,” says Kerry.
“Amye came for the first time when she was just six-months-old. It was always so lovely to see her and her brother Adam have the freedom to go off on their bikes.”
Kerry says her mother-in-law always wanted to have a tearoom in the village and used to discuss it with her friend who owned the village shop, which occupied the same building as The Hive does now.
When Kerry and Andy retired from running their post office in Wolverhampton, life accidentally became almost busier when they were asked to run the kitchen and bar at a local rugby club.
“We had wanted to relax a bit, but we just got busier and busier and eventually realised that if we stayed down there, we would never realise our dreams.”
So, in 2019, the couple moved to Garlieston full-time, at first with plans just to take life a bit easier. However, when Amye gave up her job as a primary teacher and also decided to move up to the village, with her partner Antony and daughter Darcy, now seven (they have since had a second daughter Margot, who is two), plans began to be hatched for the empty seafront property the family had bought a few years earlier.
“We wanted to create a warm, family-focused space where community and comfort come first,” says Kerry.
“But we spent time trying to figure out what exactly we were going to do. There were a lot of hurdles. At first, we thought it would be a vintage theme but then, while helping friends relocate to rural France, I stayed in a bar with a coffee shop which had such bright, cheery colours and bees here, there and everywhere and that became our inspiration. Surrounded by nature, sunshine and the gentle hum of bees, the idea just clicked.”
“We went for a natural base colour with lots of nice bright pops of colour,” says Amye. “We wanted it to look how we wanted people to feel when they walked in. One customer said it must be called The Hive because everyone in here is buzzing.”
From opening in 2022 with just the two of them and a couple of young staff members, The Hive now employs 19 part-time staff at the height of the summer.
In the first year, they had intended it to be seasonal, closing in October, and had to stick to that because of the planning permission they were granted. With huge demand and support from the local community, they went back to the council and were granted year-round
permission in May 2023.
“Since then, it’s just gone from strength to strength,” says Kerry. “We take a week and a bit off at Christmas, but on New Year’s day in here it’s like high summer.”
When it comes to food, Kerry and Amye were determined that The Hive would be “a bit different” serving fresh, healthy food with more options for gluten-free and vegan customers.
Kerry enjoys experimenting and taking feedback from The Hive’s regulars and has produced a range of signature dishes including her Hive folded omelette, her Hive Shakshuka, and The Hive rice bowl.
There’s always a freshly made soup and a counter of mouthwatering sweet treats including Kerry’s legendary scones and cheesecakes.
The fresh coffee is from Ovenbird Coffee Roasters who now produce a blend specifically for The Hive, which Kerry and Amy sell as bags of ground coffee.
The Hive is now well-known for hosting special events for the likes of Mother’s Day and Christmas and its monthly themed evenings, usually showcasing the food of a particular country, have proved extremely popular.
Ice cream nights are also a big hit, The Hive having stocked a range of flavours from Girvan Gelateria from the start, and they plan to develop their idea of a ‘dessert shop’ with desserts to eat in or take away this summer.
The shelves and walls around The Hive are always full of tempting gifts, arts, crafts and artisan products for customers to browse, from photography by Rossofmoffat and prints and illustrations by Newton Stewart-based Little Dot Creations, to jams and chutneys from Galloway Lodge and toiletries and home scents from The Portpatrick Fragrance Company.
“The gift side of things has really grown and we are always looking out for new businesses to work with,” says Kerry.
The Hive was named Café of the Year at the 2025 Dumfries & Galloway Life Awards and Amye says the whole family were delighted just to be nominated: “To be recognised for all the hard work we put in was amazing. We definitely didn’t expect to win.”
‘Some even say it has been life-changing for them, to have somewhere to go’
AS SEEN ON TV
See The Hive on episode five of season three of Jules and Greg’s wild swim, in which celebrity couple Julie Wilson Nimmo and Greg Hemphill braved the chilly waters of Garlieston with members of local wild swimming group, Machars Mermaids on their tour of the South of Scotland. The episode is on BBC iPlayer.
www.thehivegarlieston.co.uk
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