A new 'tougher' thread... and so it continues

Mrs_Chip

I will have to get kitchen cleared via Environmental Health for the business anyway, and that won't be a problem. But if I fundamentally change use of the cottage (like using living room as a tea room) I think I will need to apply for permission from council, and tbh they will require allsorts.

I have been having a think. I could do either take-away cups or real cups/mugs for peeps to take to harbour (minutes walk round corner) to sit on seats and look at the view. I could charge a deposit if necessary, but would prefer not to. Soup is no problem, I make gallons of it anyway :rotfl:.

Mrs_Chip

Possession

We hope only to do three afternoons/evenings in the van, and so would have morning as and other days to put the board up next door. But it's one of the things we need to work out, I don't drive van, OH don't cook (yet:D) so van needs both of us at the mo.

I could drive the van, I have manual licence, but not driven manual for years so will need a lot of practice!

Possession

Mrs_Chip wrote: »

I will have to get kitchen cleared via Environmental Health for the business anyway, and that won't be a problem. But if I fundamentally change use of the cottage (like using living room as a tea room) I think I will need to apply for permission from council, and tbh they will require allsorts.

I have been having a think. I could do either take-away cups or real cups/mugs for peeps to take to harbour (minutes walk round corner) to sit on seats and look at the view. I could charge a deposit if necessary, but would prefer not to. Soup is no problem, I make gallons of it anyway :rotfl:.

Sorry ignore previous post Mrs Chip, I read on. If you are having a cafe, you definitely need change of use. Round here that would be impossible to get in a residential area but it may be very different where you are. If you are having customers enter the premises you need to have different insurance too - although we informed our house insurers we didn't need to as we have no customers visiting the premises.
Re. environmental health, invite them before you are up and running to give you advice. They are generally very helpful and it will stand you in good stead when you have your actual inspection (may be a good few months after you have started up) that you wanted to comply with everything. In our area at least, if you are in a residential property as we are they need to give you 24 hrs notice of an inspection. we didn't realise this and spent ages faffing about trying to have everything tidy and never letting the kids leave anything out. It turned out when we did have the inspection it was half term and I didn't think it would be good to have the kids there so FIL took them out for the day. The kitchen is always cleaned up but the rest of the downstairs was too, and we got Gold but it almost seemed as if the Inspector had decided in the first 5 mins. In contrast my MIL's shop had a much harder time of it in their last inspection although they also got Gold. Be aware they may check date labels etc on food in the fridge and freezer. If you're selling hot food you also need a probe and evidence that you occasionally check the temperature.
Your walkers' treats sound great and I really hope it gets off the ground for you.

Possession

Mrs_Chip wrote: »

Possession

We hope only to do three afternoons/evenings in the van, and so would have morning as and other days to put the board up next door. But it's one of the things we need to work out, I don't drive van, OH don't cook (yet:D) so van needs both of us at the mo.

I could drive the van, I have manual licence, but not driven manual for years so will need a lot of practice!

I'm on the van insurance, and am used to a manual car but i have to say apart from one practise run I haven't driven the van and I would be quite scared to do so. As I have my 'proper' job (proper only in that it pays the mortgage!) I can't go out really anyway, although I do the odd delivery and take all our deliveries in.
Re card cups with lids - get triple lined, expensive but well worth it, they really hold the heat.

Mrs_Chip

We have had EV out to give us clearance to trade from van (before gas farce) and yes once we get going they will come back and check or record keeping re food temps, fridges, cleaning and operating regimes etc. I took her to see work in progress next door and she was able to give me some useful info. As we don't live there we won't have your problems, but I will be using the kitchen for us as I will finally have a big oven , and more space generally for cooking!

lillibet_dripping

prepareathome wrote: »

Its all true, I have the original book- they didn't tell you how Conchita saved her son. They tried really hard to force her to send him to hospital but she refused and made a sling out of pure silk and for 7 weeks kept him in that next to her body under her clothes. Nothing more than a nappy on him and he thrived - she did feed him as they showed you, from her expressed milk. I will dig the book out and tell you the name of the author, its around somewhere, not read it for a few years, so will be buried in one of the many bookcases in this house. Book is an autobiography by the midwife with names changed but that is all.

My son was born 5 weeks prem in hospital in The Netherlands. There was more tubing than baby coz he was so tiny. They recommended exactly this type of care.- they called it 'kangaroo care'.
It worked and he's now a strapping 17 year old:)

Possession

Mrs_Chip wrote: »

We have had EV out to give us clearance to trade from van (before gas farce) and yes once we get going they will come back and check or record keeping re food temps, fridges, cleaning and operating regimes etc. I took her to see work in progress next door and she was able to give me some useful info. As we don't live there we won't have your problems, but I will be using the kitchen for us as I will finally have a big oven , and more space generally for cooking!

Sounds great! And I'm jealous of the big oven, we're having to do it all with a normal double oven and its frankly a pain.
Our living room fire has just failed its gas inspection and is being capped.:( We haven't used it since the last inspection when it scraped through, but apparently the flue leaks everywhere. heigh ho. At least the 25 yr old boiler passed.

nuatha

Mrs_Chip wrote: »

I will have to get kitchen cleared via Environmental Health for the business anyway, and that won't be a problem. But if I fundamentally change use of the cottage (like using living room as a tea room) I think I will need to apply for permission from council, and tbh they will require allsorts.

I have been having a think. I could do either take-away cups or real cups/mugs for peeps to take to harbour (minutes walk round corner) to sit on seats and look at the view. I could charge a deposit if necessary, but would prefer not to. Soup is no problem, I make gallons of it anyway :rotfl:.

We never entered the farmhouse (see my previous post) though sometimes sheltered in a barn if the weather was really foul - apparently that kept the officials happy.
Could you serve from the van? that way they couldn't argue you'd turned the prep kitchen into a cafe.
Include the cost of a replacement mug in the price of the cuppa, that way no deposits needed and every returned mug is extra profit - Asda were doing 4 packs of plain white mugs at 99p - and a walk to the viewpoint to ensure no mugs/rubbish left might even pay for the time needed.
May I suggest always having a vegan soup option - covers a huge range of dietary preferences.

Austin_Allegro

Mrs Chip, that is the kind of view/place I dream about. Well done you for starting your own business. I think the future of Britain is going to be a lot more of this kind of thing, people starting up on their own in a small way rather than depending on big companies to 'give' them a job. A shame if the councils sometimes do all they can to make this difficult. I know we need protection from dodgy dealers, but at the same time I can't help feeling a lot of council staff are just trying to justify their own jobs.

O/S fans might be interested in a book called 'Our Hidden Lives' by Simon Garfield. It's a collection of real diaries from the postwar era; it's very interesting to see how people coped with REAL austerity (not the nonexistent type we have today). One of the people is a single lady who decides to rent her cottage out to walkers. The other is an elderly gentleman called Mr Brush who goes on holiday to a cottage by the sea. There is no toilet in the cottage - so he and his wife have to walk five minutes to a public convenience. Imagine that today - he would probably be arrested for hanging around it so often! Still, they didn't seem to mind.

Mrs_Chip

Oh sorry to hear about your fire - I think the gas people are getting much more strict with things generally I think.

When I say 'big' I mean 'normal' :rotfl:. I bought a Baumatic range cooker from eb*y, one big oven and a smaller second one, but I don't know how useful that will be until I get to play with it!

ETA - Thanks AA, I' sure you are right! I have all the Hidden Lives books, they are great, Mr Brush was one of my favorite characters! There must be a huge amount of info in the Observance archive.