The owners behind Northumberland's newest food and drink venues are celebrating after seeing turnover soar far beyond their expectations due to overwhelming support from locals.
Hummingbird Café Bar in Amble opened its doors in March as the brainchild of couple Chris and Becca Green, with the stylish venue specialising in cocktails and grazing boards. Named after a tattoo shared by Becca and her dad, Hummingbird originally started out as a 20-page cocktail leaflet and a string of pop-up events - and has come on in leaps and bounds ever since after being fully embraced by the people of Northumberland.
As well as their bustling Queen Street bar, Chris and Becca have also created a 200-page cocktail book and a range of "at home" cocktails by the bottle - and the Amble couple have seen their business take off faster than they could ever have dreamed. Chris, formerly a mixologist at Newcastle Quayside's Michelin-starred House of Tides, said: "We are already well on our way to hitting our three-year targets within only ten months."
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Chris and Becca set out to give visitors an authentic Northumbrian experience when they step into the café bar, with their sharing boards put together using produce all sourced within a 22-mile radius of the venue - starting with their chutney supplier located just a few doors down. Becca explained: "We wanted to serve the things that we love to have ourselves; so we have Doddington Cheeses, we get all of the pork pies, sausage rolls, scotch eggs from Turnbulls in Alnwick.
"Even the crisps, and the oil and vinegars we use for dipping are from Seabanks at Buston Barns which is just down the road. We have an amazing group of producers here in Northumberland it makes sense to showcase what we have an offer in the region."
The pair have also been working with Hepple Spirits, based in Morpeth, learning more about their unique distilling techniques to pass on details of ingredients down to their customers. They have even committed to planting their very own juniper bush too, laying the foundations to make cocktails with home-grown gin berries in the coming years.
The pair were given support by the Rural Design Centre, who helped them put together their business plan and decide what they wanted to achieve with the new venue over the next few years. Liz Gray, senior innovation manager at the Rural Design Centre, said, "Chris and Becca have such a great product but weren't sure how to plan beyond their pop-up events, so we went through their mid- and long-term goals and looked at how they could grow and maintain the ethos of what it is they have already.
"I worked with Chris as he took the next step of getting a mobile unit – in this case a small horsebox, and from there we agreed on future targets and what help we could give. They have now surpassed these targets and have done it in a sensible way, and it is so good to see how their brand is taking off."
She added: "It is a delight to work with so many different types of businesses as part of the Rural Design Centre, even more so when we see one business tapping into a network of local based businesses, each providing or delivering a service whether that's business to business or business to customer. The innovation in the area is astounding and so good to be a part of helping people wherever we can."
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