26/09/2026
Honesty Post ❤️🩹
It’s going to be a wonderful day.
It can’t be worse than yesterday. I will save you the photo of me sitting cross-legged behind the counter devastated, worried and tearful. But the truth is, sometimes small business curve balls are tough enough to break you.
Our espresso machine broke (and for a coffee shop, that’s pretty essential) I was devastated when it couldn’t be fixed on site. Richard from Mad About Coffee has been incredible, working so hard to get us up and running again and is now setting us up with a loan machine ready for service today (Saturday). Thank you to everyone that came in, offered support and kind words, adapted their order and opted to support us anyway. You kept us open. You kept me going.
Small businesses in hospitality are closing down everywhere. Rising costs, VAT, change in NI, Min wage, rising energy bills, changes in spending habits- the odds are stacked against us. Something as small as replacing or fixing a piece of equipment & losing trade can literally make the difference between opening again next month, or just becoming another statistic in the current climate of ‘oh did you hear so-and-so has just closed. How sad’.
We aren’t just another Coffee Shop and I’m so proud of our community, we offer so much more than just coffee and cake. To name a few:
- support people
- support community projects
-support small businesses
- employ people
- use local businesses for maintenance works
- offer work experience for different schools
- offer work experience for young people for DofE
- support two local sports teams
- support local charities and offer 5 vouchers a month for fundraisers/raffles.
- we pay our rates & taxes into the economy (unlike larger chains!)
To continue doing those things and to keep our doors open we need to scrape through getting our Espresso Machine fixed and working again.
If you are passing today, please pop in and grab a coffee, a milkshake, or a slice of cake, a sausage roll, lunch or a can of drink. Every little bit will help towards getting our machine fixed and keeping us going so we can continue to be a part of the Bramford Village community that we love so much.
We do not want to become another statistic.
With much love (and sorry for the sads 😕)
Catherine x
