BREAKING NEWS!…

There’s a brand new Afternoon Tease cafe coming to town!

OPENING OCTOBER 2013!

It may or may not come as a surprise that I am branching out and expanding my cake making business into my very own café!

I’ve been dying to break the news for a while now but have been waiting to have a planning application approved (a long arduous 2 month process) and wanted to wait until the deal was signed and sealed before I spilled the beans. But now, I’m truly ready to shout it from the rooftops!

Setting up a cafe hasn’t been a snap decision, I’ve actually been dedicated to planning and saving for this event for seven years and I’m very excited that the time has finally come!

To give you a bit of background on how I got to this point, after a stint of five years in London I moved back to my hometown of Cambridge in October 2011, but kept up with the commute to the big smoke to continue my job as Marketing Manager for a group of London and Birmingham based restaurants. In October 2012 I finally took the plunge to become a fully self-employed cake baker.

Since being back in Cambridge I’ve been busy scouring the streets and looking for the perfect property for my Afternoon Tease cafe and eventually found it at 13 King Street (map here). The shop used to house a cafe called ‘Cazimir’, where coincidentally, I worked back in the days when I was saving to go travelling around the world. Without wanting to sound like a cliche, it was actually while travelling that I got the idea to start a cafe. Seeing the standard of the coffee, cakes and food in general in New Zealand and Australia made me realise just how behind the UK is in this department. It all seemed like such a simple equation…good quality produce, simply and well prepared and sold in a welcoming, atmospheric environment. But returning from a year of travelling with zero money in the bank and only pure determination to get me there I had a long way to go! However the Antipodean revelation along with five years of enjoying London’s burgeoning cafe scene and my hate of chain cafes sealed the deal and made me even more determined to succeed.

So now we’re up to the present day and I’ve just signed the lease and collected the keys for number 13! I’ve got some hard work ahead of me but my aim is to open Afternoon Tease in mid October 2013.

I’ll be selling my homemade cakes, exceptional coffee, breakfasts and light lunches and not forgetting my favourite meal…brunch, which I’ll serve all day Saturday and Sunday. The quality of the food and drink are amazingly important to me but my other main aim is to serve it up with a large slice of ‘feel good’ welcoming atmosphere. Bringing an exciting and lively ‘extension to your living room’ environment and an experience of London’s café culture to Cambridge.

Afternoon Tease won’t be your ordinary 9-5 cafe, expect events, pop ups, music and collaborations and even the occasional Plate Lickers Supper Club, which I host with Miss Igs (www.missigs.com).

I’m going to be blogging the whole adventure of setting up my cafe, even the tough bits. This idea was inspired by a blog I read a fair few years ago called Scrambling Eggs by Shelagh Ryan who is the owner of 3 very successful cafes in London, which I blogged here Lantana, Salvation Jane and newly opened Ruby Dock. I read Shelagh’s blog from the very beginning as she documented the opening of Lantana and was inspired to start writing my blog with the hope that someday I too would be blogging my cafe opening experience and here I am doing just that!

I’m in need a bit of technical help but I am somehow going to link up my blog so that when I write a new blog post it will let everyone who has signed up for my newsletter know about it. So, if you don’t want to miss a thing, sign up for my Afternoon Tease News.

Over and out for now!