The Bottesford Coffee Shop continues to serve the community after a year in business

A coffee shop in Bottesford has celebrated a year of business after opening towards the end of Covid restrictions.

The Bottesford Coffee Shop celebrated a year in business on May 26 and hopes to continue serving fresh food and helping the community.

During the day the business is a coffee shop which serves a range of food and even offers afternoon tea, but last month the business became fully licensed and began serving tapas.

Owner of the coffee shop, Jane Mclaughlin, enjoys running the business and has done lots to help the community, including organising a free Christmas dinner for more than 40 people and she even organises small food parcels for people in the village who have cancer and are unable to get out.

Jane said: "We still do a lot for the community and always will.

"We do tapas, we were doing it five nights a week but we just get nobody in and I've employed young staff in the village and trained them up, but we're just not getting anyone in the door.

"I don't know whether its because of the climate or if people just don't know about us.

"We run as a coffee shop Monday to Friday from 8am until 3pm, and we are going to start doing the tapas Wednesday, Thursday and Friday."

Jane and her husband moved to Spain several years ago where they had their own business, but after Paul was diagnosed with brain cancer they returned to the UK so that she could take care of him, leaving their business and apartment behind.

She said: "We had an amazing business out there, and we came here and I looked after Paul for three and a half years on my own until he passed away, and then I bought the shop.

Jane bought the coffee shop with the money she recieved from Paul's pension and transformed it into the beautiful site it is today where she employs three people from the village.

At her business in Spain, Jane had sold tapas and wanted to introduce it to the coffee shop, she said: "I just thought it would be somewhere nice that's not dressed up, no table cloths, somewhere that people can meet and share tapas, as tapas is somewhere where you sit with your friends.

"There's no time limits on my tables, I don't want it to be a restaurant at all, I want people to come in through the doors and sit and still have that nice feeling of togetherness."

Jane wants to continue supporting the community and despite having dozens of heartwarming reviews, the business isn't seeing as many customers as it once did.

Jane added: "Money really doesn't mean anything anymore to me, its the people that you have around you and that's why I did what I did at Christmas.

"I've not took a penny out of this shop for wages, it's just covering the costs, and I've got to the point where I have no money left now and I need it to make me a living."