Hasan and I always dreamt of having our own Café, having been involved in family ones. We set our sights on the River Gardens after five long years of research and planning as we fell in love with the location and its beautiful views.

We first contacted the Estate Agents who sadly would not even let us inside the unit as they wanted a company rather than a sole trader for the site. However, we did not give up hope and several years later wrote directly to the Landlord with our aspirations, ethos, business plan, menu, design, concept and our dream of one day being at the heart of the River Gardens. To our surprise, we received an email back the next day asking for a meeting at the unit and it took us just over a year from that meeting to opening our doors.

Unfortunately seven months later, Covid-19 struck. This was a tremendous shock but we did the one thing we could, which was to go back to basics. Hasan and I, the original team, opened for takeaways a few weeks later providing bread, eggs, flour, cakes and hot drinks. We sadly lost all twelve members of our team who we furloughed in the hope we would bring them back one day.

Today with the support of the local people, we are in a stronger place and most of our staff is back. However, we are concerned for the future as winter creeps up and, due to Covid guidelines we will only be allowed limited covers inside. So our plan is to stay open a little later, which is something the residents often ask about, and we are working on a new menu that will be pretty exciting. In the meantime, we are continuing with our takeaway service. We just want to say a Big Thank You to everyone who sent us messages of support, have dined with us or even bought the occasional coffee. And we will be forever indebted to the act of kindness with the Crowdfund, which will always remain in our memory.

You are all the reason that we are still here and we know it. It’s not ours. It’s your Community Café.

Havva and Hasan

rivergardenscafe.co.uk