In my former life pre mummy days, I owned my own cafe and I really must get around to blogging about it some day! It was called eat drink eat.Anyway, today’s flashback is from March 2007, when I got my photo in the local paper!!
My cafe was situated in the market town of Great Torrington where I use to live (funnily enough, before I owned the cafe!) in the towns pannier market. It was a very small little cafe but I put my heart and soul into that place and it was a good little business.
In 2007 Great Torrington wanted to become a Fair-Trade town and a local lady spent ages trying to get local businesses on board to become more Fair-Trade. I did my bit and used Fair-Trade coffee, hot chocolate, sugar, fruit juices and biscuit snacks in the cafe.
2007 was also the year when the Fair -Trade campaign (on a national level) introduced a Fair -Trade Fortnight where businesses were encouraged to highlight all things Fair-Trade to their customers. One of the things I loved the most about running my own cafe was creating new taste sensations whether it be cakes, sandwich or panini fillings, hot drink concoctions etc… So I took the Fair Trade Fortnight as an opportunity to devise a Fair-Trade Specials Menu. If my memory serves me well, I recall that I came up with (using fair trade bananas):
Banana, bacon & mango chutney panini
Banoffee cupcakes
Banana & chocolate spread panini
I sold a lot of the cupcakes but the paninis didn’t really take off!! One of my staff tried the bacon, banana and mango chutney panini and said it was nice but my customers were not as adventurous!!
At the end of the fortnight on the Saturday, we participating business owners were invited to attend an award ceremony in the town square to be presented their certificate by the mayor to recognise our efforts. Saturdays were my busiest day and being the cook there was no way I could slip out to collect mine, but one of my customers was the deputy mayor and she said she would collect mine for me. However, she did more than that. She brought the mayor and a photographer to my cafe as she had suggested to them that maybe I could have my photo taken to be in the paper!!
Well when they turned up I was red faced as usual from cooking lots of breakfasts, and I blushed again when I was asked to pose with the mayor! I never got much publicity for my cafe so I was chuffed when I got into the North Devon Journal for this!
You will notice in the photo that the name on the certificate is Pannier Market Cafe – people never got the name of my cafe right!!!
Now go and check out what other people have flash backed about
Thank you xx
Ahhh well done! The cupcakes sound amazing and the banana and nutella panini but I am not too sure about the bacon one! Sounds interesting though! x
What a cool post! It’s good to find out something you didn’t know about someone you read regularly – I can’t wait to hear about your cafe owning days !
What a great picture and lovely story x
Absolutely love it! I’d love to hear more about your cafe days! Well done you! Do you miss it?? Thanks for linking up such a positive Flashback Friday! 😉
Karin
Made me want to hear more about your café adventures! Love your fair trade bananas menu! xx
I don’t miss it now I have my boys, as while I was pregnant and during first few months of having Burton before I sold it, it became a pain because I struggled to keep both going! It was brilliant though and a great experience and I loved creating my menus xx
Thank you for your comment. I will write some more cafe adventures soon x
Thank you for your comment – I was pleased to have been selected for the paper x
Thank you but would you have been adventurous to have tried the banana, bacon & mango chutney panini? I have had some requests to write more cafe posts so I will soon x
To be fair I didn’t try the savoury banana panini myself – nt a fan of them! X