An independent herbal health shop and tea room in Cardiff is closing after nearly a decade of trading after its energy costs "doubled". Michele Daramat, the owner of The Apothecary in Canton, said she realised in September that she wouldn't be able to sustain her shop for another year amid the cost of living crisis.
In November she made the final decision to stop trading and the business will close on Saturday, January 14. She told WalesOnline her custom still hadn't returned to its pre-Covid levels and this had been compounded by the soaring costs of gas and electricity.
"I got a Bounce Back Loan after the first lockdown, which I've still got to pay back – and we didn't bounce back," she said. "Since last June I've struggled to pay the rent here because the cost of electricity and gas has just gone up so much...it's not a charge you can really pass onto your customers.
"I had such a bad June and July that I couldn't actually make the rent that was due in August...the rest of the year it's just been: 'Rent or stock – what am I going to do?'" Meanwhile the shop's lease is up for renewal so Michele said her rent is due to increase as well.
"I just thought: 'I'm not renewing the lease because it's going to be the same as this, if not worse, next year.' And we've got no certainty – we don't know. You can't make a business decision on not knowing.
"The power has doubled and I don't know what's going to happen in the future – I think they're going to go up again. I'm lucky because for a lot of businesses it's tripled. There's a restaurant on Cowbridge Road and she was saying her energy costs have gone from £5,000 to £15,000 a year...there is a baker's that is not far from here and he was saying pretty much the same thing. And that's with a cap."
She added that her customers are "really struggling" to pay their own bills. "The cost of power at home is costing so much that people have hardly enough to buy food and sustenance – let alone to spend anything extra. So all shops are struggling.
"The energy prices are just unsustainable. I've got it at home as well so I know people haven't got any disposable income because we're all finding it just so tough. These companies are paying out huge dividends to their shareholders – their shareholders should be ashamed to take those dividends because people are really suffering.
"It's not fair. I hear people in the tea room saying they're cutting back on using their hot water, that they don't want to have a shower because they don't want to run up a big bill – this is awful. They're saying they don't want to go to the shops, they're trying to cut back on their food because they're trying to pay their energy bills...it's disgusting."
Michele, who is a medical herbalist and used to run a herbal practice from home, has been running The Apothecary entirely on her own for nine years. She set up the shop in Llandaff Road to as a place to house her practice and sell herbal products.
The products on offer in the shop gradually expanded and today they include teas, homeware, and chocolates. Meanwhile the tea room at the rear of the shop has a wide range of goods including hot drinks, homemade cakes, soups, and panini.
Michele said the support from the community after she announced the closure had been "brilliant" with local traders having offered to help her clear out the shop. She added that she intends to continue her herbal medicine practice from home. "Anything I don't sell in the shop I'll probably stick on eBay and just see how it goes for the next couple of years because I think things are just going to be so tough."
Describing the closure as "emotional" she said: "You put a lot of emotion, a lot of love into your shop...This shop is part of the community and I do a lot of things for the community. We used to host The Great Get Together every year – we used to have lots of events happening around here."
The Apothecary is currently having a closing down sale. There will also 'closing down party' on Saturday afternoon at the shop "just to say thank you to all our regular customers", Michele said. To get more stories about Cardiff sent straight to your inbox click here.
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