Opening our Newlands Café in September last year brought many changes to The Creamery – the most notable being that we changed our business from being a very seasonal one, to a business that thrives year round. But the café has also meant that we’ve been able to increasing our permanent staff by 7 people, and adding another churn and a blast freezer to the kitchen, and expanding our repertoire to include waffles, desserts and coffees.
This past summer has been an exhilarating one, we could never have dreamed of how quickly the support for our café would build. We were so warmly received into the neighbourhood, and have built friendships and relationships with our customers that aren’t always possible at bustling weekly markets. There were times when we didn’t have enough seats, and we needed more staff – but most crucially, we couldn’t serve enough ice cream! And so, over the last year we’ve realised that we’ve grown up quite a bit since opening the café – and the truth of the matter was we needed a kitchen and home base to reflect that.
We have found that space in Salt River, in the newly, beautifully refurbished PALS Building on Durham Avenue. For Progress and the rest of the kitchen team designing a custom built ice cream production kitchen was a dream come true, which includes our biggest investment of the last 3 years: a walk in freezer and fridge. On a mezzanine above the kitchen will be our communual office space for the management team – finally enough office space for all, a meeting room, and (everyone’s excited about this!) a staff break room.
On the street level, facing Durham Avenue we are opening another café. The café will be a baby sister to our Newlands Café, about the same size and offering the same delicious menu you’ve grown to love: hot waffles, sundaes, the finest single estate organic coffee from Rosetta Roastery, and of course – scoops and pints to take home.
Joining a new neighbourhood is something that we’re all looking forward to: the chance to make new friends with our neighbours in the PALS Building, but also a chance to bring the Creamery Café experience a little closer to all our fans in the City Bowl and Atlantic suburbs. Salt River is also a short hop from the N1, for our loyal Northern Suburbs fans.
The first phase of our move to Salt River will be relocating our kitchen and offices, and getting the engine of the Creamery up and running smoothly. Then we hope to open the doors of our Salt River Café in the beginning of September, when opening times and other details will be confirmed.
We can’t wait to welcome you to our new Creamery Home.
I loooooooove the ice cream – Best ever!
The unique flavour are so tasty and it bursts of flavour in my mouth!