A new cafe for Tyrwhitt Road? You decide.
Reader Tim is thinking about opening a new cafe at the north east corner of town, to revive a site that's been empty for too long. When he got in touch about his idea, we gave him the benefit of our wisdom, but for some reason that wasn't enough for him. He'd like you all to help him decide whether to go ahead. Here's his message:
Many Brockley Central readers will have already met me - I work part-time at The Brockley Mess (I'm the most handsome one).
When I found out last year that Moonbow Jakes had shut it reignited a long-held ambition: to open and run my own cafe. Of course, upon doing a bit of digging I discovered that Ray and Mel (them of Royal Teas) had dibs on it. Jaded with my full-time voluntary sector job I got in touch with Ray, who offered me a couple of days a week, and I have been there from the start.
I joined the Mess after a long break from catering to re-learn the trade, with the intention of at some point opening something up myself. The Talbot opening and being successful got me wondering about the derelict grocers at the end of my road as a potential site. There's a dearth of cafe-type eateries in the area, save for the College Cafe on Lewisham Way and a few chicken shops further down the hill, if that's your thing. Neither of these fit the bill tremendously well for me, and I suspect the same can be said for a lot of other local people.
Cycling past one day I chanced upon a guy inside the building doing some clearance, so I stopped and quizzed him a bit. He works for the owners and they are starting to think about doing it up with a view to renting it (anyone who has seen the building will know that this will be quite a task!). I presented my seed of an idea and he seemed to think they might be receptive to this; I hope to be put in touch with them when they return from a holiday.
Really I am no further along than that. It will be a while before anything happens - if it happens at all - but it struck me that the first step might be a bit of very basic market research with the readers of the blog.
To these ends I have created a simplistic questionnaire to get the ball rolling. I would be grateful to anyone who can spare literally one minute to answer the six questions, and grateful, too, for the more expansive comments I'm sure this post will elicit.
Please complete the questionnaire here.