Happy birthday to The Potting Shed!
This time last year, we finally opened the doors to the popular Potting Shed eatery at Grimsby Garden Centre.
Like many businesses during lockdown, our popular cafe faced the challenges of closing the doors on their much-loved customers and asking many of their staff to support other areas where possible – some were redeployed to frontline NHS mental health services and some continuing found their inner Monty Don and the green fingers they never knew they had, supporting our busy garden centre free delivery service.
As much as this was a challenging period for the garden centre as a business, they took the opportunity to go full-steam-ahead with the redevelopment plans for what was then, Café Blue – with staff supporting other areas or furloughed and customers at home, they knew that now was the time to get to work with minimal impact on their team and customers.
By April 2021, with the majority of the building works now complete, it was time to get the team back into the brand-new eatery – revealing the new name: The Potting Shed, and giving them plenty of time to get used to the new environment, new equipment and of course, taste-testing and perfecting recipes for the new menu. Besides, as much as Kev the chef loved his temporary role supporting the grounds maintenance team at the garden centre, he was ready to hang up his gardening gloves and get back into his chef whites.
We welcomed back customers – both familiar faces and new, Monday 17 May 2021 to enjoy the new menu, making sure to keep the old Café Blue classics like the famous carvery and proper Grimsby haddock and chips.
Since then, we’ve served: almost 6000 portions of fish and chips, almost 16,000 full English breakfasts, over 71,500 hot drinks, and over 8,500 carveries.
Let’s not forget, we even won Gi Grimsby News’ ‘Restaurant of the Year’!
All in all, it’s not been a bad first year.
Thanks to all who have supported us so far – helping us to reinvest profits back into local mental health services.
We look forward to serving up even more good food and drink in the future!
