A new café opening in the new year promises to be a bit of an experience for diners and their four-legged friends. Ruby and Sophia's Dog Bakery Gateway Lodge at Sherwood Forest Corner will transform into a brand new café from January 4.
Owner Danielle Downs is of the bakery which sells a collection of dog treats, biscuits and accessories. She has been working hard to expand the business in the new year.
Danielle said: "We wanted to create a place where you could bring your dog so they could have a really nice experience as well as their owners. I'm a dog owner myself as I have a rescue Dalmatian and there aren't a lot of places where you can take them. You can't take them into shops or you have to have them on a lead in the forest."
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The result is the Pawsome experience which owners can book through the website or at the shop itself. "We've been developing a lot of products for the doggie afternoon tea which we have been working on in our dog bakery kitchen. We wanted to create a nice menu that would be suitable for dogs and then create an atmosphere where they can sit, eat and keep occupied," she explained.
"We've been working with a herbalist who is knowledgeable in dog care and nutrition to create dog teas. We have a calming tea or a soothing tummy brew as well as our dog beers and wines. We also have a puppichino bar which we have been putting together.
"It's very bonkers but we like that. Bonkers always works for us," she added. There will be plenty of treats for the owners to enjoy while they watch their pups play.
"We do offer a human package because we don't want people to be sat there while the dogs are munching away. We decided to use a cake supplier who would deliver the cakes to us. For our human customers, we do a nice afternoon tea package where you can get a selection of unlimited tea, coffee or hot chocolate and it lasts for 90 minutes."
Its been a welcome addition to the shop which suffered a huge setback earlier in the year when the business was targeted by thieves. The series of break-ins back left the small business struggling to play catch up as a lot of stock was stolen.
"We took a big loss financially with the stock that was stolen. It takes a long time to bake the stock back up so it took us weeks to get back to those stock levels."
She added: "It's fantastic for us at the moment but we are playing catch up all the time after the thefts. We were struggling to get the shelves fully stocked again. It's a lovely position to be in but the impact that had is that we had to bake for months to get ahead of ourselves with the stock levels that got stripped out in just one day."
When it comes to the future of the cafe and the shop, Danielle has lots of ideas for things they can do including events.
"We are looking forward to implementing everything we have planned. We have a Valentine's Day doggie afternoon tea coming up in February. We've already sold ten spaces for our Valentine's day event. It's been absolutely crazy as people are really excited about it."
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