Yellow Door

A family-run County Armagh food business founded by Simon Dougan MBE in 1992, now known for artisan baking, bespoke wedding catering, private and corporate events, and a long-standing commitment to seasonal local produce.

Yellow Door is one of Northern Ireland’s most established independent food and catering businesses. Its story began in 1992 when chef Simon Dougan MBE opened the original Yellow Door as a fine-dining restaurant in Gilford. Five years later, demand for a more relaxed food offering led to the opening of the Yellow Door Deli in Portadown, and from there the business expanded into artisan baking, outside catering, events and food-service partnerships across Northern Ireland and beyond.

Simon’s influence is fundamental to the Yellow Door identity. He built the business around proper cooking, local ingredients and a belief that food should be generous, honest and full of flavour. In recognition of his contribution to hospitality and catering, Simon was awarded an MBE. Following his death in 2025, the business continues within the family, with his cousin Andrew Dougan carrying Yellow Door forward while preserving the standards, relationships and food culture established over more than three decades.

Today, Yellow Door presents itself first and foremost as a modern catering company with local roots. Weddings, private celebrations, corporate functions and major hospitality events form a central part of the business, supported by an experienced kitchen, bakery and event-management team. Menus are designed around the occasion rather than imposed as a fixed formula, allowing clients to choose everything from canapés and bowl food to relaxed sharing menus, street-food-style stations and formal seated dining.

Weddings are a major specialism. Yellow Door has more than 30 years of experience creating bespoke wedding food and works with couples to build menus around their own tastes, venue and style of celebration. The team is experienced in catering at marquee weddings, historic houses, private homes and other special venues, and the business places strong emphasis on planning, service and the practical logistics that allow an event to run smoothly.

Private and corporate catering is similarly flexible. Yellow Door handles family celebrations, VIP receptions, launches, meetings, business functions and large-scale events, tailoring the food and service to the brief. The company’s approach is designed to make the catering feel integral to the event rather than simply delivered alongside it.

The bakery remains one of the most distinctive parts of Yellow Door. Bread and baked goods are made from scratch using traditional methods, with the business explicitly rejecting premixes, artificial additives and shortcuts. Flour, water, fermentation time and skilled hands are treated as the foundations of good bread, producing sourdoughs, wheaten breads, rolls, pastries and other baked goods with the texture and flavour associated with artisan production.

This baking tradition has deep roots within the business. Yellow Door has long produced its own breads, cakes, desserts and patisserie for deli, catering and wholesale use, giving the company greater control over quality and allowing bakery products to become part of the identity of its event menus and food-service relationships.

Local sourcing is another defining principle. Yellow Door’s own current material emphasises seasonal local produce, carefully chosen ingredients and relationships with Irish farmers and food producers. The business also maintains a kitchen garden, growing herbs, greens and seasonal produce used to inspire menus and keep the cooking connected to the land and the seasons.

The family story continues beyond the kitchen itself. Simon’s wife, Jilly, has long been closely connected to Yellow Door’s approach to growing and seasonal ingredients. Her passion for herbs, edible gardens and local produce has helped shape the kitchen-garden philosophy behind the business, while initiatives such as Sow, Grow, Munch reflected her commitment to helping people understand where food comes from. In the bakery, Gary Dougan is part of that same family continuity, working alongside the team responsible for Yellow Door’s breads and baked goods made properly from scratch. Together, Jilly’s garden-led approach and Gary’s bakery role reinforce what has always made Yellow Door distinctive: food that begins with people, ingredients and craft rather than shortcuts.

Sustainability has been part of that philosophy for many years. Previous Yellow Door material highlighted membership of the Sustainable Restaurant Association, work to reduce single-use plastics and landfill waste, and the use of the kitchen garden, orchard and local suppliers as part of a more responsible food system. The current business continues to place seasonality, sourcing and thoughtful production at the centre of its food.

Yellow Door’s current operating base is at Unit 1, The Innovation Centre, 20 Queens Road in Belfast’s Titanic Quarter. The move reflects the way the business has evolved: today it is primarily a catering, event and bakery operation rather than a conventional walk-in deli. The former Portadown deli has closed, so W.ie recommends contacting the team before travelling to Queens Road.

The company’s longevity is particularly important. Northern Ireland’s hospitality sector has changed dramatically since 1992, but Yellow Door has continued to adapt while holding on to the same central ideas: skilled chefs, properly made food, a strong bakery, local suppliers and family involvement. That continuity gives the business a credibility that cannot be manufactured through branding alone.

Why W.ie chose Yellow Door: Yellow Door belongs on W.ie because its story goes far beyond a single café or catering menu. Simon Dougan MBE created a food business that helped champion local produce and proper cooking in Northern Ireland for more than 30 years, and the business now continues under family stewardship with Andrew Dougan. The combination of founder legacy, artisan baking, serious event catering, seasonal sourcing and deep roots in County Armagh makes Yellow Door one of the region’s most recognisable independent food names. For W.ie, it represents exactly the kind of business where history, quality and local identity all reinforce one another.