Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Beans & Barley Update
Dear Beans & Barley Shop Customers,
We have been opened for almost a year and a half now and have had some ups and downs throughout our journey and without a doubt enjoyed the whole process of building up a business from scratch, especially if it's a speciality shop selling some unusual products from around the world. We’ve had some difficult times with management & finding the products that are likely to sell etc. and it has proven to be very difficult with such speciality products. As you may already know, a lot of the products that we sell have very short best before dates due to not containing preservatives or other useless ingredients that you would usually get in supermarket food. This has resulted in large amounts of wastage since we’ve opened and coming up to a year and a half we have had to re-consider the whole idea/concept of the business and look closely into our finances.
We are stuck for ideas to find a solution as to what can be done to prevent losses within the business. We have tried increasing sales, as some of you may have realised we’ve added fruit & veg, ice creams, additional range, but it hasn’t helped, we have had to raise our prices to compensate for the wastage, which again hasn’t helped, the only option left for us was to reduce the range to a bare minimum which will result in less customers and in turn less sales which won’t help either. Therefore, we have decided that having a retail premises is not financially viable no matter what we try to do and have had to make a very difficult decision to discontinue the retail side of the business.
We believe that by discontinuing the retail section of the business we will give the cafe more of a chance to progress by focusing solely on the cafe and being more creative with what we do. We will make Beans & Barley a much more mum/baby friendly environment, we will use some of the current retail space to create a play area for the kids, our walls will be used for art exhibitions and we will have comfortable sofas scattered around. We will be opening later than usual (especially on weekends) with nibbles and some great wines & draught beers and we will be running weekly classes such as salsa. During the day we will have workshops that will include some of Paul’s speciality subjects, coffee cupping sessions as well as some kids activities such as drawing classes etc. We apologise in advance if we are causing any body inconvenience with this decision but it's not something we have chosen to do, it's something we have had to do.
We will not be buying in any new stock as we need to clear out what we have in stock, also our scaffold shelving will be up for grabs once they are empty along with some of our equipment.
Again, we apologise for any inconvenience caused but it gives us a chance to be more creative with the large space we have.
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Beans & Barley on
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Thank you Danielle..
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Permalink Reply by Charlotte on
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What will happen to the lovely guy who works in the shop? He is so pleasant and helpful.
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Permalink Reply by Ruth on
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Very sorry to hear that, I liked the shop area but I didn't buy a lot there I suppose, not enough to help you guys out. I quite like the cafe as it but understand you have to change to keep open and stay afloat. I think that might mean you'll lose my custom the way you are headed but but you'll make up for it with lots of newcomers and really wish you well, lots of success to come. It's not easy being in business and there is a lot of competition down the lanes. Very brave to keep trying= good luck!
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Thanks for your support Ruth, much appreciated. I agree, its been difficult but when you put so much effort into a place, hand build everything in the shop, spend 70+ hours in here a week, its pretty difficult to walk out :) we will keep trying and see where it takes us.
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Such a lot of long hours and hard work- entrepreneurs like yourselves deserve a break somehow and support.
Good luck! I will still come for coffee, even if you have a kids play area... I couldn't abandon you!
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Look forward to seeing you soon then ;) take care
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Permalink Reply by tigha on
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I think a change sounds a good idea. I must admit I never understood why it started business almost next door to HLS, which had already established itself. I will always go there instead as a result
But I do like your cafe area and you do great coffee, and not many places do that, Even that beans and coffee,music place right near me doesn't do decent coffee. so yes I'm sure there is room for more cafe type place,glass of wine etc in the afternoon
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Hey Tigha, as I mentioned in an earlier reply, we never knew HLS was opening until January but we had already paid a deposit for our place in October with intentions to open this kind of place. It was a surprise for us and by the time we heard about HLS everything was already planned out so we basically tried to keep things different as much as we could. That hasn't worked out well so we will be improving our coffee shop and hopefully this will benefit the guys at HLS. Thank you for your comments about the coffee, we try our best to keep our coffee at the highest standards possible so we're glad you enjoy it. Hope to see you soon mate..
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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HLS don't sell coffee, because that's Blend's job and they didn't want to be in competition with them.
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We have very different tastes when it comes to coffee. The Music and Beans coffee is as good as the Blend coffee, IMHO.
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Permalink Reply by Sarah on
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Meanwhile I don't like the coffee at Music and Beans (they don't do a long black), love the coffee at Blend and think the coffee at Beans and Barley is ok.
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Something for tweens and teens (and their families) would be good. It doesn't have to be a regular thing, a designated evening just once in a while, families book tables etc. Brouhaha has a great space with sofas and games which they seem to like.
I will have a think! Good Luck in the meantime. Btw, do you have a website? I can't seem to find one.
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