Postby dudette » Thu Aug 29, 2013 7:06 pm
A business that I would love to see would be one that does a healthy kids tea every day. You could just do one, or maybe two dishes, like cottage pie, or chicken in some tasty sauce, as long as you do something different every day and it would have to appeal to older children after school as well as younger ones. A frequent topic of conversation among my mummy friends of older (7 plus) kids is how much we hate cooking two dinners. They're past the nursery grub stage, but husbands come in too late for them to stay up to have a family dinner. Ergo, somewhere we could just pop into and they could have their tea and I don't have to cook twice would be very very welcome!
On a more general level, I think if you're going to do this you need to serve really good food and drinks. Many cafes fail because the food and coffee is just not up to scratch. Munchkin Lane frequently ran out of food by 9.30am. I once asked for toast and marmalade and they didn't even have any marmalade! There was a cafe where Cath Kidstone is now which was popular with mums as it was kid-friendly but the food and drink were pretty dire. Crumpet started off well but went downhill. Look at Brew if you want inspiration. It's always packed. Mums have tastebuds too and you need to be serving delicious coffee and yummy food, you need good, pleasant staff and you need to keep the place clean. Crumpet's tables were permanently sticky and disgusting by the end and although I loved it when it first opened, they didn't maintain their standards. The Boiled Egg and Soldier was always very popular - more so than Tamra, although it may have been because it had such a cute name.
I hope you succeed but please pay attention to your standards. Northcote Road has many so-so eateries but is crying out for something a bit classier. Head off to the achingly trendy areas around Shoreditch and Brick Lane to see what I mean.
