Back Our Businesses: Second place ‘community cafe of the year’ shares concerns over ‘inconsistency’ of custom

This year’s community cafe silver award winner at the Northamptonshire Food and Drink awards has shared its concerns over the “inconsistency” of custom and how this may affect the future.

Cafe 1850, in Barrack Road, has only been open since September 2021, yet has already been nominated for a county-wide award and placed second.

However, the operations manager Richard Beeby admits that although the business has grown significantly since May, this has “slowed massively” since November.

Richard said: “It’s alarming and shows we have to be cautious. Running a business during the cost of living crisis has been tough and hugely challenging, as we are mindful that we are still such a new business.”

The team knows they need to keep prices reasonable so people can afford to visit, but has to balance covering their increasing costs – which are “continuous”.

The price of their ingredients has hit Cafe 1850 the hardest, as some have increased by as much as 20 percent.

For this reason they regularly review their menus, and prices are altered based on the cost of certain ingredients.

“We recognise it’s a luxury to visit a cafe and have a coffee,” said Richard. “People are changing their habits and not visiting as much, as well as some customers who now just have a coffee where they would have also bought a cake before.”

Even over the past two weeks, Cafe 1850 has stopped selling paninis and just sells toasties as the price of panini bread has “massively” gone up – and they do not want the customers to have to take the hit with price rises.

They are also keen not to waste food so customers can let them know if they would rather not have a side salad, which can then be saved.

Richard says business is not consistent all the time, which does not help with knowing how many staff to have in on a certain day. “We may be overstaffed for a day that turns out to be dire,” he said.

Despite growing concerns about covering overhead costs, Cafe 1850 sees new people visit each day and believes their customer base is still evolving – which is promising.

Richard said: “We would love to use marketing to attract new customers but we can’t justify the cost.

“Our customers know we are working our hardest to maintain an excellent welcome and quality products.

“We want to keep costs low but we don’t want it to impact the quality of what we offer, and our customers trust us to do what’s right and fair.”

Cafe 1850 can only hope the Northampton community will continue supporting them in the tough months that will follow Christmas, but Richard says they have “clearly made an impact and people love what they are doing” to have won the silver community cafe of the year award.

“It’s difficult to tell the difference the silver award has had on us,” said Richard. “It’s definitely been weakened by the current climate and we can only hope it has had a positive impact.”

Richard believes if the timing was different, the impact of the accolade would have been greater.