Harrogate indie cafe - we will go online to battle coronavirus lockdown

The owner of Baltzersen's on Oxford Street said, though life was set to get "incredibly tough," the successful cafe's new bakery would still open albeit online only.

Paul Rawlinson said: "Since the announcement last night advising us to avoid social gatherings things have been something of a whirlwind.

"Small businesses in the hospitality sector like Baltzersen’s and many other across different sectors are going to find life incredibly tough over the next few weeks and months, in fact it’s a battle for survival.

"We are currently open as normal but expecting to move to a limited takeaway only option tomorrow (whilst the team do some cleaning and closing down behind the scenes) and then likely closed from Thursday.

"Unfortunately we’ve had to pause plans to open the bakery shop in the former Sweet Shop adjacent to the Theatre – it is now vital to retain the funds we would have spent to support the core business

"As this drama has unfolded we have found ourselves right in the middle of preparing to launch our new bakery.

"We’ve spent the money we loaned to invest in this project so it makes sense to us to push on and get it open, especially as there is possibly going to be pressure on the availability of fresh bread and we think we can help with that.

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Paul Rawlinson said: "Opening our new bakery will allow us to partially employ some of our team in baking, delivery and sales roles during this period too.

"So, we’re going to start baking on March 30 as planned and, once we’re happy that we have a good enough range of products, we’ll be offering them for sale via the Bakeri Baltzersen website.

"You’ll have the option of having your bread and pastries delivered to your door by one of our team. This will be an option based on order values or for a delivery fee.

"We’ll offer a pre-order and collect service from the coffee shop so you can walk/cycle out or travel down in the car and collect these (you can even drive down and stop on the precinct before 10.30am).

"If there are stores locally, especially in more rural areas, that would like to work with us by becoming a collection point for bread orders or who would like to take bread to retail to your customers then get in touch."

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