Member Article

Independent cafe Poco Coffee launches in Llandudno

An independent community café Poco Coffee has opened its doors in Llandudno following an impressive five-figure sum investment.

The former 600 sq. ft. newsagent, located on Gloddaeth Street in the town centre, has been transformed into a welcoming hub to offer a ‘refreshing alternative’ to high street coffee chains.

Founded by husband and wife duo Richard and Angela Sutton in 2012, Poco Coffee already operates three sites across the North West in Earlestown, Prescot and Kirkby, all of which promote active community engagement and support local causes. Likewise, plans to add a social enterprise arm to the Kirkby outlet are currently underway.

Angela said: “The concept of Poco Coffee was built on an underlying passion for coffee along with a genuine interest in café culture and its customers. Poco, meaning small in Spanish was coined to encompass the concept of the ’small’ brand taking on the big chains on the high street. For this reason, we are very excited to have opened our fourth site in Llandudno, and look forward to welcoming new faces who will hopefully become regulars.

“As a business, we have previously chosen smaller town centres in which to open our sites, so we wanted to test ourselves in a bigger and busier location. We first viewed the Llandudno site in August of last year and spent three months monitoring footfall patterns. As the town is quite remote from our current cluster of outlets, it will also allow us to see if our systems, processes and supply chains could support business expansion. In terms of the future, plans to franchise nationally are currently going ahead.“

Poco Coffee serves up a range of barista beverages including speciality coffees via an impressive state-of-the-art coffee machine used in barista championship events, tea and hot chocolate to name a few, alongside a selection of freshly made sandwiches, paninis, toasties, homemade soups and Scouse. Regular community events will also be held at the venue.

Angela added: “Although we like to keep our menus consistent, we always add in a number of offerings unique to each location. Our Llandudno site will see the introduction of locally inspired menu items such as Welsh Rarebit together with a wider patisserie selection of cakes to cater for the tourism market.“

The new Llandudno venue has created a total of six new jobs amongst the local community and is now open to the public.

For more information visit www.pococoffee.co.uk

This was posted in Bdaily's Members' News section by Craig Guy .