Drop and Roll 🥖🥖
Carbs are lyf
The story about the community that carried us through the pandemic
It’s March 2020, there’s a distant murmur of a contagious virus but ignorance is bliss and we are coursing towards the upcoming season like moths to a flame. It’s the first year in our cafe and we weren’t far off congratulatory high fives for having limped through our first winter. Ella has just become single and before she can even download (yet another) dating app, the village slowly grinds to a halt. Unsure of what TF is happening and with an espresso machine raring to go but trying not to act desperado, we closed the cafe doors, unsure when we might return.
Joe’s boyfriend arrives from London with 2 weeks worth of clothing packed (enough to see himself through all of this he thinks) and we settle down like wartime Britain to listen to the Prime Minister tell us we are going into what will become our first Lockdown.
“Sidenote - When Joe and I travelled around Australia, we were too tight to pay for accommodation and so slept in the back of our car to save money. We coined the phrase ‘Wartime Britain’ to describe stuffing towels and surboard bags up against the windows to block out any light so passers by might be less suspicious of us sleeping the car.”
We spent the next few nights creating a website and go live within a week to start what we called:
The Drop and Roll 🥖🥖
The idea of course being, we would drop baked goods, bread rolls et al at your door (within a 2 mile radius) contact free. We start wearing masks and gloves (a bit over the top we think), but better to be safe than sorry (masks at the time aren’t really a thing). Alongside the nation, we faced shortages in our supply chain. Eggs, Flour, Yeast, Milk. We’re calling wholesalers on the daily hassling them for their egg delivery dates like a caller to an auction house. We bid on yeast on eBay. Our Postman rolls his eyes at us as we switch our whole cafe service to paper bags and cardboard boxes.
We convinced a local baker ‘Baked By Joe’ (different Joe) to become our Sourdough supplier and his first weekend we had 33 sourdough orders for easter weekend (which we think he made in his local Village Hall kitchen). Our living room became a grocery sorting office and Joe became a delivery driver in a county where House Numbers don’t exist and postcodes lead you to the middle of nowhere.
We faced many problems. One weekend we had a flat tyre and luckily (the pros of living in North Devon) a handy friend was driving past. On a particularly warm day, our automatic handbrake wouldn’t release and again we had to call on yet more friends.
And then we did what everyone else seemed to do during the pandemic. We posted our Banana bread recipe and saw people succeed making it at home. Joe shaved his head. We clapped for carers. We got angry. We got sad. We protested for BLM and raised money for Black Minds Matter. We drank wine. We watched telly together. We ordered home delivery from other indies. We cried a lot.
And soon, it was May.
We decided to celebrate the Bank Holiday by opening up the cafe as a Takeaway. We pulled out our events tables and set up outside. We kept our pre-orders open but had more doughnuts on the door. We fired up our espresso machine - and for some people it was the first coffee from a cafe they had had since March. For others, we were the first people they had spoken to outside of their household.
“Usually the glorified role in a cafe is the Barista, but after lockdown, I only wanted to be front of house. People overlook the importance of hospitality. But over lockdown, it gave us the opportunity for us to serve our community. To smile, ask them how they’re doing and remember how they like their flat white.”
What became apparent from the weekend we opened, was how many young minds had moved back to the area. People had moved back in with parents. People had relocated from cities. it felt like the community was reviving.
