08/11/2024
Some of you may know, some of you may not, but we have some sad news,
We will be closing the shop on the 1st March next year. Forever.
This has been a hard decision and one that we have been thinking about for the past year.
We have tried to sell the shop so that Crossgates will still have access to the amazing coffee you guys have become accustomed to over the last three years. This has been, unfortunately, impossible. The market isn’t exactly hot right now and the one very promising person we had lined up was refused by our landlord, who apparently would rather the unit sat empty than have a business in it. (No we can’t work that one out either)
As many of you will be aware from the news and social media, it is an extremely hard time for small businesses, and there is no support by the government to relieve any costs.
Combine that with the 400%(ish) increase in energy costs two years ago, that has shown no sign of reducing (commercial properties never received energy reductions like residential ones)
Plus the recent budget meaning our costs go up again.
We have tried to never mention the financial struggles we have faced as we never believed it suitable to load customers up with our burdens, you don’t come here to hear our woes, this is our happy chilled place, with no room for such bad vibes, we were trained to keep business within the business, so it may be a shock to hear.
Another big point for us is that we been unable to see family properly due to the time we give to the shop.
Something we always said was that we would put family first, and we have had to put this aside more than once, important events have been missed.
This combined with a severely lowered income means we can not afford to ‘staff up’ while we take needed time away. Time off for any reason is extremely costly.
We can just not continue as it is and as sad as that may be, we want to thank you guys, because you guys have made this the best thing we have ever done, seriously, this really was a big tick on the bucket list, we hope we achieved what we set out to do, make a local, friendly, high quality, chilled out plant shop with a coffee shop tucked in the back selling the best cakes, grilled cheeses and coffee we could!
Thank you.
We hope that you’ve enjoyed coming to visit us and that you look back on the ‘plant cafe’ as fondly as we will.
All that being said, it’s not goodbye yet! We are still here until 1st March, Christmas will not be affected, so you can expect special drinks (yes, the marshmallow top will be back!) all the beautiful decorations and general Christmas cheer in the cosiest shop in crossgates!
The cocktail nights will be the last ever Christmas cocktails and we have a handful of spaces left, so message us now to get booked in, because you know these are something you don’t want to miss!
We’ll be holding more events closer to the closing date so keep an eye out for these because we know they are going to be popular!
That’s about all we can muster for this message, it’s been a few hard weeks of coming to terms with everything. We’ll provide more info as we get it. But for now.
Long live The Plant Collection.
Love Fiona & Tom
