York may appear to be the ideal destination to open a café, with a varied resident population, a high density of shops, providing further potential customers, and a large number of visitors to complete the picture. But when Clare Prowse gave up her job in contract catering in London and moved to the city to join her partner, finding a site proved to be difficult.
“I was looking for a niche for food and there was very little in the way of a specialist deli but it was a nightmare to find a location – it took 8 or 9 months,” she says. “We were looking at premises that were fairly modern that would be easy to make changes to but because York is a historical city, there are lots of restrictions applied to change of use to buildings in the city centre.”
Eventually she found a former ladies’ clothes shop on Lendal, close to the entrance of York Museum gardens. She installed a kitchen, air conditioning and plumbing – which she describes as “quite a big refurbishment” – and launched de’Clare Catering with the opening of de’Clare deli.
The original idea was to do take-away. “But customers kept asking to stay and have a cup of coffee. We have got three tables and can seat about 12 people. If we had known, we would have done it differently,” says Prowse. “There is rarely a time when people are not sitting down and eating or drinking.” De’Clare deli is open from 8.00am to 5.30pm Monday to Saturday, 10am to 3.30pm on Sunday.
In addition to those who work in local shops, customers include tourists buying food for picnics in the park, nearby businesses, including people who work at Aviva, one of the biggest employers in York; employees of York City Council, the guildhall and city offices, plus local solicitors and accountants, all of whom are within a few minutes of the café. “We get people walking home, who buy cheese, bread, cake… they use us as a local shop,” she says. Not only will de’Clare make up platters of meats, salads and cakes for picnics but also for parties and working lunches for which there is a small delivery charge.
When de’Clare deli opened five years ago, to Clare Prowse’s surprise, there was little in the area but since then, two café delis have opened within three or four minutes of the shop, plus a Costa Coffee.
However, the appearance of hot competition has not badly affected Café de’Clare’s business. “Costa has opened one shop away from us but we do really good coffee, we are seen as niche, and people going to Costa would always have gone somewhere else – there is not much crossover, if they don’t go to Costa, they go to Starbucks,” says Prowse.
“They have not decimated our business. We have people buying our coffee who bought their coffee here five years ago. They have to opportunity to go to all the other places that have opened but they have not taken it,” she says. She is, however, realistic, and recognises there is only so much coffee people can buy: “These other cafés do not make a massive difference but I am not trying to say they don’t affect us because they obviously do.”
She does, however, see the competition as a good thing. “It has improved the area and it brings people in. There is a foodie buzz,” says Prowse. “No one has the right not to have competition and every time something opens, we look at what we are doing – should we be doing that, how do we differentiate?”
Clare Prowse and David North funded the setting up of de’Clare deli themselves and they run the business together, with Prowse doing the hands on, day to day stuff, and North supporting.
Since starting de’Clare deli, they have also opened a 36-seat café in Peter Lane, less that five minutes’ walk away. “We wanted to develop the deli but didn’t have the space,” she says. “The café is tucked away in a small lane in the city centre and is quite difficult for people to find. We would not have chosen that had we not got the deli and already got a good reputation through that. We benefited from word of mouth to publicise the café. It would have been a nightmare otherwise.”
Café de’Clare is purely eat in and is doing well: it has been mentioned in the latest edition of the Good Food Guide, which describes it as “an exciting newcomer with all-round quality” and was marked as one to watch. Puddings got a special mention, including fresh dates soaked in coffee and cardamom syrup and a “decadent” chocolate and Guinness cake. In addition, the Independent rated de’Clare deli among the 50 best delis in the UK.
Deli de’Clare sources as much as possible locally. “We did a lot of tasting to choose the coffee and went with Coopers Coffee, which is based in Huddersfield,” she says. “It is a small, independent company. Then we found a coffee machine. We chose a Dalla Corte, the Rolls-Royce of Italian coffee machines, it’s really good. It cost over £5,000 and was worth it – it is into its sixth year. The coffee has proved to be extremely successful: it is a combination of the machine and the coffee but unfortunately, the Coopers has been bought out by a big company and we may change because we like dealing with small companies – the jury’s still out.”
Prowse carefully chooses the best available products from the most appropriate suppliers. She buys meat from a local company that specialises in rare breeds; goes to a local fishmonger, Dales, for smoked fish; and a local cheese monger and specialist in Yorkshire cheese. She goes to Brindisa – the epitome of Spanish food providers – for all Spanish products and Just So for Italian. Best sellers are York Preserves jams, the Swaledale Cheese Company’s goat’s cheese and Brindisa chorizo. Specialities such as Lottie Shaw’s parkin – a Yorkshire gingerbread, and Botham’s of Whitby York brack – a boiled fruit loaf without fat and low in sugars – are popular with locals and tourists.
Clare Prowse is still selling some 80% of the products in de’Clare deli that she was selling when they launched five years ago. “Over time, new cheeses have come out and some of the Spanish meats we sell are more popular now; and eating in has continued to grow – we didn’t have that at first,” she says. “We keep re-examining what we do: we didn’t do fresh fruit smoothies or frappés when we started.”
Smoothies are made daily and ingredients are generally dictated by what is in season, sometimes supplemented by quick frozen fruit. Current offerings include mango and banana, cranberry juice, yogurt and local honey, and there is usually a berry smoothie as well. “We sometimes blend fresh applies into them,” says Prowse.
Prowse and David North also pay regular visits to London to see what is going on there. “We recently looked at Somerset House, where they have sandwiches piled on an ambient counter, ready to go,” she says. “We are looking at displaying things slightly differently, rather than refrigerated and wrapped. Using the 4-hour rule, not everything has to be refrigerated and not everything benefits from being chilled to death.”
De’Clare Deli also has a self-help salad counter with eight ingredients, which are served in a noodle box and change regularly. Examples are mixed green leaves; cucumber with fresh chilli, poppy seed and parsley with a lemon and oil dressing; pasta with green olives and pesto; tomato, mozzarella and basil; new potatoes with crème fraîche and dill; roast carrot and cumin and Greek salad. “We come up with the ideas ourselves,” says Prowse. “We also make a lot of our own cakes – brownies, flapjacks, quiche, sausage rolls and soups.
“We are trying to stay ahead of the game rather than following. We have three people between the counter and the kitchen and I still do some of that. I’m fairly hands on – you have to be in a small business.”