The original plan was to convert the shop floor area into a large commercial catering kitchen and keep the small room as a meeting area for our clients to visit us - Somewhere to sit with a nice coffee to discuss their dreams for their weddings and special parties .
However with a different hat on I had been working with many local food producers and understood that many of them struggled to find a route to market. It occurred to me that as 9 High Street has a great shop window and Gnosall is the largest village in England ( lots of people) - what better than to create a business with a double edged sword and open it up as a delicatessen.
Armed with this idea we set about converting the back half of the ground floor of the building into our kitchen so that we could create wonderful home cooked food for weddings and corporate lunches etc, and the front half as The Gastronomy Shop - stocking local cheeses from Shropshire and Staffordshire, local Sausages from Market Drayton, Delicious pork pies, smoked goods from Alan at Bings Heath and Peters own home made breads and cakes.
It was very important to us to keep the integrity of the building - we have been told that its the oldest shop in the village and we really didn't want to cover up its charm with modern trappings. However we didn't want it to be old fashioned either so we chose the decor very carefully and invested lots of time restoring the old oak floorboards.The Shop opened on the 15 May 2007 Since then the range of products and local producers who supply to us has developed and grown so that different and seasonal foods are always changing on the shelves.
Before Christmas when the economic downturn really began to bite we had to take a good look at the business and rather than sit back, moan and allow things to overwhelm us we decided to be positive and be creative. We attended lots of food fairs and Christmas shows in the festive run up and even won a prize at The English Winter Fair for our stall. We decided that if customers weren't going to find us we would find them! We also decided to change what had previously been our store room come office into an extension of the small coffee area and so the Meeting Room was launched on the 17th January this year.
With the help of Angela Smith, a talented local jeweller we opened the doors on the 17th with the goal of inviting villagers to come along, sample Angela's Jewellery making workshops and hopefully buy a cup of Aroma Coffee. It was a great success and more people venture into the cafe each week to discover that local and home made food is not any more expensive than mass produced and imported food, that our shop is really relaxed, friendly and inviting and that we don't mind if you sit with a whole pot of tea and read the Newspaper for as long as you like.
Now appraoching our second year we are so proud of the community feel that has grown amongst our loyal customers and we choose to count many of them as friends now.
So If you are visiting Staffordshire and fancy a really good cuppa pop in and see us... We might even tempt you to a slice of Peters coffee and walnut cake or a Staffordshire cream tea.
