Coffee Shop Snippets #6 Delivery Day

Over the past couple of days parcels containing the things I've ordered for the shop have started to arrive, it's been a bit like Christmas! Some of the things are very exciting and pleasing on the eye, others more practical, but just a necessary.

I'm delighted that our teapots have arrived, you wouldn't believe how hard they were to get hold of and at one point I thought I'd have to find an alternative, but thankfully persistence paid off and in sourcing the teapots I found a company who supply some gorgeous and unusual products.
So here you go the last of this weeks snippets, enjoy! xx

Coffee Shop Snippets #5 It's a tough job.......

Today I had the very best business meeting I've had to date, it was all about Ice Cream!

We decided long ago that if we ever got the chance to open our Coffee Shop, then we'd stock Cheshire Farm Ice Cream. As far as we're concerned, it's the best around and in our family that's saying something as we have some real ice cream fiends!

I'd been in contact with Sally from Cheshire farm for some time and finally today I got to meet her in person to discuss our requirements and how it all works.

Sally very kindly bought a box of samples for us to taste and as the shop is still a construction site, we left the samples with the workers, including Mr P, and went to the pub next door to go through all the details. Poor R had to come along for the ride and he was as good as gold while Sally & I went through the finer details.

The way Cheshire Farm deal with their new customers is fantastic, they do everything they can to help you on their way, including starting you off with your first lot of ice cream for a new freezer, which will be a huge help as those things don't come cheap!

Flavour selections and descriptions

As R was so good Sally very kindly gave us another box of samples to take home to share with the girls and get the whole family to sample the flavours, including Sticky Toffee Pudding, Baileys, Ferrero Rocher, Coconut, Mango & Ginger sorbet, Strawberry & Cream, Chocolate, Mint Choc-Chip, Honeycomb, Blackcurrant & Licorice, all of which are divine! 

The Boys at the shop didn't quite finish all the tubs (although they had a good try!) so rather than waste it the children had tiny tastes of the little that was left and we now have a lovely selection in the freezer to have a proper taste after tea this evening, and probably tomorrow evening too!

Tiny tubs of joy!

So, which flavour would you choose??

Coffee Shop Snippets #4 One week on.......

This latest Snippets post might not have quite the impact of the first peek you got last week, but I got a bit choked  when I went into the shop this evening. Mr P suggested we take a quick run down to the shop this evening as I hadn't been in for a day or so and our team of tradesmen (including Mr P and his lovely Dad) have been hard at work this week.

So here are the pictures from this evening. We went just before 7pm and I was delighted not only by the work, but by the wonderful light in the shop.

Look at the light!

Our lovely windows looking to the front of the shop

From the front to the back

Not the most glamorous, but these will be the toilets!

Hopefully these pictures give you a better idea of the light and space we have. I really love out little shop and feel very at home there. Thank you for keeping up with the developments so far, stay tuned folks, it's all starting to come together!!

First peep inside the shop......Coffee Shop Snippets #3

Mr P hasn't been at home very much this weekend, that's because he's been working hard at the shop.
He took some pictures when he'd finished work today and we decided to show you what's been happening. So here it is, your first look inside our shop! Don't forget to post a comment if you stop by the blog, we'll always try to reply and really appreciate your comments.

Here goes...........

Before

After

Before

After

Before

After

So there you have it, the first sneaky peek of the inside of the shop, What do you think so far?

Take a seat while you wait...Coffee Shop Snippets #2

Waiting, waiting....that's all we seem to do! Well obviously we don't just sit around and wait, there have been other things to do, small things that will all form part of the bigger plan, but on the whole it feels like there has been a lot of waiting!
First we had to wait to see if we would be granted A3 usage for the shop, then we had to wait for the leases and legal work to be sorted, then we had to wait for building regulations to be approved, THEN we had to wait for the builders to return their quotes to us, some of which we are still waiting on, over two weeks later! and breathe.....................


To add to this I have also had to wait for my engagement ring to be re-set, but I'm delighted to say we got the call to say it's in the shop ready to be collected.

One of the things we did while waiting was source chairs for the shop. When you search on-line for coffee shop chairs or cafe chairs, most of the ones that come up are ultra modern, metal, or flimsy looking and wouldn't fit in with the look or feel we're trying create at the shop. We started to search on second-hand  sites like Ebay and secondhand-chairs-and-tables.co.uk and found a few possible selections. In the end we bought a couple of chairs off of Ebay and while searching I came across one Ebay shop that had a 'real' shop so we went along for a look and came away with twelve chairs! This was on a day when we'd collected two other chairs purchased via Ebay so Mr P somehow managed to squeeze fourteen chairs into the back of our car! All in all we ended up with about twenty chairs in various shapes, sizes and colours.

The plan is to renovate all of these chairs, not so much to make them match, but to make them coordinate.  I've been sanding them down and giving them a couple of coats of undercoat, sanding some more and then finishing them with Craig & Rose paints. I've done three chairs so far and as far as I can tell they are the three oldest I'm guessing 1930's - 1950's. 

One of a pair  

Finished with it's original seat pad in place

My Favourite little chair that cost just £5!

So with many more things to source and lots more chairs to paint I have plenty to keep me busy. Mr P has now started work in the shop, alongside builders, plumbers and electricians. There is an awful lot to do before we can open, but I'm confident we have the right people in place to do the work and hopefully soon we'll have a clearer idea of an opening date.