A man has spoken of his plans to open a bakery in a North East town serving vegan-friendly products and championing local produce.
Malcolm Robertson submitted an application back in October to convert part of a property - which can be found Oxford Terrace, Bowburn, Durham - into a café.
When purchasing the house Robertson noticed a set of doors behind some wooden boards which the estate agent revealed was the entrance to a shop back in the 1930s.
After clearing the boards and the ivy from the outside of the building, he found a lock with a key still inside.
Mr Robertson has since been working on the property to bring “it up to spec” for the café that he hopes to open.
He said: “We purchased the house and sure enough we took away the boards and there’s the two doors with a key in the lock.
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“The outside was completely covered in ivy and if you were a foot away from it you wouldn’t see the doors.
“So we cut away the ivy and we’re decorating the place and bringing it up to spec for the café.”
The process did encounter some difficulties, however, with legal issues around the use of the property as well as a ceiling that had been destroyed by water.
Mr Robertson added: “Yeah we also had to plaster the ceiling there was water that had come through the ceiling so we had to border it up and plaster it.
“We also took up the carpet as well, but we’ve retained the original quarry tiles that were down just to keep the character.
“Round where there’s concrete we’ve blended in poxy-resin paint on the floor so it really looks nice, it took a bit of doing to clean it up but the original tiles look good.”
Mr Robertson hopes the business can be a nice “social space” for the local community while also offering great local produce.
He said: “We just want it as a nice social space for the community, it’s not just a business to make money.
“Obviously we don’t do this for nothing, but what we want is to actually be an integrated part of the community.
“So people can come in, can buy fresh baked bread using local County Durham flour, we grow some beautiful flour in the county.”
He added: “We also forage, so I have three allotments and we forage for blackberries and elderberries and that’s a little thing but we’re bringing that to the table as well.
“We can say ‘look here’s some jam and it’s County Durham grown berries and I picked them myself’”
As part of the planning application it was suggested that there would be special events held on some of the nights.
Mr Robertson said: “Any local community that want to use the building, as long as it adds to the shop, something like the nursery groups, if they want to use the building for a couple of hours that would be great.
“What we were thinking as well would be to have maybe once a month a special event of maybe an Indian night, where we’ll have Indian cuisine and Italian night where we have Italian cuisine.”
The cafe will also be brewing its own many flavours of Kombucha.
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