If you’d walked around the area surrounding Cavehill this time last year you’d have found it difficult to find many places to supply you with a caffeine hit before your hike up the hill.
However, despite that pandemic, that’s all changed.
In the area surrounding the hill, three spots have opened in the past few months. But why coffee, and why now?
Belfast Live caught up with the owners of these new cafes to ask them about opening up against the backdrop of a year of restrictions, and how it felt to be at the heart of the community during such a difficult time.
Our first stop was Coffee Essence on the Cavehill Road.
Directly across from the Waterworks, and just down the road from the Upper Cavehill Road entrance to the Cavehill Country Park, the café is housed inside Wholistic Works – a health and wellbeing centre.
Wholistic Works and Coffee Essence go hand-in-hand. They have the same eco-friendly mindset and are run by husband-and-wife team Theresa Armenta Montes and her husband, Andy.
Coffee Essence was scheduled to open in March 2020; however, lockdown came into force and their plans were dashed. But all was not lost – they were able to open just a few months later in August.
Theresa said: “My job went on pause because Wholistic Works had to close due to the restrictions. My husband was out of work because of covid.
"We just thought – let’s do this. It’s made a positive experience out of a crisis. It was something we’d wanted to do anyway; it was something we’d been planning for the future. I kind of planted the seed of it in our customers’ minds a long time ago – asking them if a café here was something they wanted to see, and everyone told us it was.”
Theresa said locals have told them the café has provided a “beacon of hope” for them during the dark days of lockdown. For many, the opportunity to have a coffee and chat with a neighbour has been a saving grace.
“What motivates us is our customers,” she said, “So many of the people around here are working from home and they call in every day for a wee coffee or tea on their break because it’s within walking distance. They start seeing people they haven’t seen in months – it’s really good.”
Theresa’s husband, Andy, finds himself at home behind the coffee machine at Coffee Essence. She said that customers have been coming in and practicing their Spanish with him.
“Obviously, people haven’t been able to get on their holidays this year, so this is as close as they were getting,” she laughed.
Our next stop took us around the corner, onto the Antrim Road to Panama Coffee outside The Last Drop bar.
Panama Café is a city centre staple with their location in the Linen Quarter. As a result of the city centre losing a great deal of footfall as office workers work from home, owner Janine Kane chose to bring Panama to North Belfast.
She said: “We’re working alongside other businesses in the area to provide what’s needed for people around here. The response has been amazing. We’re communicating with local people to see what it is they’re specifically after, what they’re interested in, what takes they fancy.”
Demand was actually so high to pay a visit to Panama’s coffee trailer for their opening last weekend that they’ve now extended their opening hours.
But for Janine, an important aspect of their opening the coffee hatch has been to help local people who are suffering with their mental health at the moment.
“I don’t care what background you’re from – everyone’s struggling with their mental health at the minute,” she said.
“If the coffee trailer being here means people can take the kids, their dog, their bubble for a walk down to get a coffee and a walk home, then that’s a great thing. It’s just getting that exercise and a chat with our staff that’s important – for some people it might be the only person they speak to all day.”
Our last stop on our North Belfast coffee tour brings us up to Cavehill Coffee.
Located further up the Antrim Road from Panama, this café is in Mount Lennox Business Centre – just across the road from the Innisfayle Park entrance to the Cavehill.
Graham McCullough, a lorry driver from Jordanstown, opened up Cavehill Coffee in the middle of October. Although he’d had an interest in starting up his own coffee shop, it wasn’t something he was actively seeking out.
However, that changed whenever his partner opened her own business in Mount Lennox.
Now, Graham says he’s not planning to go back to his job driving lorries when lockdown ends and will instead stick around running the coffee shop.
He said: “This was always something I wanted to do but hadn’t found the right place to do it. My partner opened her business here, and mentioned they were hopefully going to get a coffee shop in the building.
“I just thought ‘Hmm, there’s an opportunity.’ So, I thought about it, spoke to the girl running the building, found a great coffee supplier – they gave me training and that was that.”
Expecting his trade to be mostly made up of clients and business owners in Mount Lennox, as well as tourists and day-trippers visiting the nearby Cavehill, Graham was shocked at how ecstatic locals were to see a coffee spot open up.
He said: “An awful lot of locals have been coming around to support – I didn’t realise how desperate people here were for something like this to open up.”
Cavehill Coffee’s window coffee hatch means they’ve been able to stay open on a takeaway basis and serve customers throughout lockdown. At the minute, Graham says they’ve been non-stop – serving around 130 customers a day, seven days a week.
But he’s happy to be busy, and says customers have pointed out how much of a help to their own mental health coming along to the café for a coffee and a chat with him has been.
He said: “A lot of people find it a sanctuary to get out of their own four walls. You’re bringing a wee bit of happiness and an escape to people.
“It’s been passed on to me a number of times that it’s doing people’s mental health justice, just escaping their houses and having somewhere to come to.
“I’m so glad of all the local support and all the people who have come to see me as well. Whether it’s raining, snowing, icy, sunshine - there's always people here. I really appreciate all the help and support I’ve received off everyone. If it weren’t for them I don’t think I’d really be here.”
