A cafe without hot drinks???

[jocook]

I work in my local childrens centre cooking for the nursery attached and have been asked to open the centres café. Great opportunity with a big BUT!! The childrens centre has a 'no hot drinks' policy which personally I feel is a bit H&S gone mad but Im having serious doubts about the viability of a café that doesn't serve tea or coffee. Does anyone else attend a childrens centre with a similar policy and would it stop any of you using the café if you couldn't get a latte to go with your scrummy scone!!??

Yes, agree with above. I used the children's centre when dd was tiny - it was a lifeline! As she has got older I don't use it much. A cafe there would have been great!

I wouldn't set foot in there if there's no Latte, sorry!

I wouldn't go if there was no hot drinks. Would lidded cups ala Starbucks work, or be too expensive?

You couldn't call it a cafe if it didn't serve tea and coffee. Could you run it as a smoothie bar? Call it 5-a-day or something? Then maybe the families using the centre would feel that visiting and getting some yummy juices are all part of healthy living!

Alternatively, it would be better to speak with the management about finding a way to exclude the cafe from the "no hot drinks" zone. You'd probably need to have a separate entrance straight to the outside, and if there is an internal entrance too then it would have to have plenty of "caution - hot drinks - no unsupervised children beyond this point" signs on the way in and "no hot drinks beyond this point" on the way out.

Could you ask other local children's centres what their hot drinks policies are, and why? It might give you some ideas for persuading your CC manager.

Our local CC allows hot drinks everywhere in the centre. They say that the children's centre should be a home-from-home, and they would expect parents to be vigilant enough for hot drinks at home, so why not at the CC? Sounds sensible to me.

Good luck with the cafe - I think it'll be much more viable if you have hot drinks though - the mark up in tea/coffee is far far greater than on fresh juice/fruit smoothies, and I think you're unlikely to be able to charge much for squash!

I agree with others that the commercial viability of a cafe with no hot drinks is likely to be a problem. I think you also need to think all year round trade. A milk/smoothie bar might just make it over the summer, but I'm pretty sure you'd struggle big time over the winter.

There's a reason we have more coffee bars & tea shops than juice bars.

Would your manager consider hot drinks in the cafe area only and only in lidded takeaway style cups?

Well I don't like hot drinks so I would be delighted to have a choice of cold drinks! I know I am in the minority though

I would go if my children's centre had a cafe - dds would love it as expect there are toys.
My la has the ridiculous no drinks whatsoever policy. The next one over doesn't. Dm takes dd to a lovely play session in her children's centre where they serve hot drinks in those metal cups with plastic lids. I would challenge the policy