In 2010 Jonathan started Cafe Môr; “I was sitting at my desk in Swindon wondering how on earth I had ended up there. I was missing the sea and the beaches of Pembrokeshire and was thinking I needed to find a way to get back home quickly - spending hours every day in front of the computer in the middle of the country was not what I wanted to do.”
“So one night I sat down and really looked at what I enjoyed in life and it became clear that the sea, food, and being creative were my passions. The next day I told my boss that I was going to work part time to allow me to start my new mobile catering career which would be based on the best of Pembrokeshire produce from the sea and wild seashore plants and seaweeds.”
“I remember my first ever stall set up on Saturdays at a local Farm shop during the summer. I got so excited I spent 14 hours prepping and cooking on the Friday. I had Pembrokeshire sushi, several salads, quiches, deli products and crab and lobster.” “It's funny, I ended up working 30 hours in two days, I was aching all over and after counting my takings for the day I worked out that I was on £1.42 and hour, but it still felt like the best days work I had ever done.”
Jonathan spent that Summer racing down the M4 to home to prep up for weekend markets and local festivals, by the end of the summer he knew that this is what he wanted to do full time and spent the winter planning for the leap into full time mobile catering. Cafe Môr was born.
On the 8th May 2011 the full time business was launched. Jonathan had spent the winter booking events for the summer and had a full diary! “I wanted something big straight away to get my teeth into and so I booked onto Hay on Wye Book Festival, which was only a few weeks away and was going to be the biggest catering job of my life.” “I arrived and was blown away by the scale of the site, 250,000 people, 10 day event, this was going to be completely different to my gig outside the farm shop the previous year.”
It was a high risk strategy, a huge catering event at the beginning the new business. Jonathan invested all of his savings in to stock, equipment hire, catering kit and disposables. “On the first day I arrived at the campsite and didn't have a penny to my name just a small float and a mountain of seafood stock.”
Fortunately Hay on Wye Book Festival proved to be a success and really helped launch a wonderful summer of food festivals, local markets and private functions.
That year Cafe Môr was shortlisted for the finals of the British Street Food Awards , due to take place in September on Jimmy's Farm, Suffolk at the end of September. To help impress the judges, Jonathan and his brother Ben (boat builder extraordinaire) built a Beach Shack out of local drift wood.
Cafe Môr took the finals by storm winning Best looking Mobiler, Best Drink and most importantly of all Best of the Best 2011!
The prize was to cater for the athletes at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Cafe Môr's signature dish "SeaShore Wraps" proved a hit with the athletes in the Olympic Village, A truly fantastic experience!
As a result of winning Best British Street Food Vendor lots of opportunities arose. It was a good first year!
2012 went on to see another amazing year with Cafe Môr winning supporters across the country. Susan Davenport invested in the business and helped to develop the concept into new markets such as Food Service and Retail. It was during 2012 that Cafe Môr became part of a new company called “The Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company.”
All sorts of sea foraged deli products were created, everything from our Welshman’s Caviar to Laverbread Pesto. All of the products were developed from recipes used at Cafe Môr. Welshman’s Caviar and Ship’s Biscuits were extremely popular and soon independent retailers were stocking Beach Food products across the UK. The lead products won The Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company a place at the BBC Good Food Winter show in Birmingham, leading to Beach Food products appearing in hundreds of Christmas hampers.
2014 Cafe Môr was going from strength to strength, achieving first place in the category of ‘Best Street Food/Take Away in the UK’, at the BBC Food & Farming Awards. Jonathan made several appearances on national and European television and radio foraging for seaweed and telling the world about The Pembrokeshire Beach Food Company.
2014 saw the launch of Mermaid Confetti a seaweed salt blend and this was succesfully introduced to the range, a celebration of North and South Wales by blending our Welshman's Caviar with Halen Mon Sea Salt (Angelsey) embracing the essence and soul of the sea.
Welshman’s Caviar, received a Great Taste award. Another new product was launched: Captain Cat’s Môr Seasoning!
2015 saw a rollacoster of emotions, from the highs of seeing Tom Jones singing his heart out in a sunny field in Somerset to a van break down on the way back from Glastonbury. We won silver at Glastonbury for the ‘Most Sustainable Trader’
We saw some of the original crew move onto to pastures new and Mermaid Danuta becoming a true tyrant in the Seaweed Kitchen! The new beach crew made a big splash, with Cafe Môr- at Freshwater West and the festival crew worked as hard as ever too.
This year we brought in a new flavour of Ship’s Biscuits – Captain Cat’s flavour. The biscuits were the first of any of our products to appear on the shelves of a major Supermarket -Marks & Spencer. This was huge for us, and the “mermaids” worked tirelessly to put the order together.
Cafe Môr experienced its best season ever at Freshwater West and this saw us open every day from Easter to the end of September. We underwent an aesthetic makeover and were kitted out with a brand new solar and wind energy system, we scrapped the old petrol generator in favour of clean, renewable power.
2016 saw us launch our Beach Food Sea Herbs range and the hard work continued with Cafe Môr, at the beach and on the festival scene.
A real highlight was being invited to Japan in the Autumn to serve up our lobster rolls drenched in seaweed butter in Hankyu department store in Osaka! We visited the monument dedicated to Dr Kathleen Mary Drew Baker, the British lady praised as the "mother of the sea" in Japan, for her scientific discoveries on the cultivation of seaweed. She saved their Laver industry!
This year also saw a big change as the decision was made to stop doing festivals. In the May we did Hay on Wye book festival for the final time and the entire summer was then focused on Cafe Môr at Fresh West which had become extremely popular and very busy! We launched our YouTube channel full of seaweed recipe videos and seemed to find ourselves adding to the ever growing list of TV appearances: James Martin, Countryfile, Coast and Country, Brian Turner, Escape to the Country, and Kate Humble's Back to the Land. All this boosted sales of Beach Food products!
2017 showed that the decision to stop festivals had been the right one, with the help of our newly up-cycled fishing boat trailer, the “Josie June” we saw even more visitors to Fresh West than ever before. We continued to keep pushing the quality of everything we did at Cafe Môr, we expanded our menu and “specials” and the use of sauces and trimmings! We also added more sweet treats to the menu! Due to good weather we decided to open during October half term for the first time, which proved to be a good move!
After a series of late nights at the time of his second daughter being born, Jonathan found himself captivated by a story he’d newly discovered, one of adventure, Pembrokeshire, passion and the deep blue sea. Jonathan had the idea for a smooth spiced rum which of course had to reflect his love of the Coast and Seaweed -This led to a new product 'Barti Rum' being launched in the Summer of 2017.
“I just wanted to make the best tasting spiced rum in the world, so I could drink it. The decision was as simple as that.”
2018 saw the development of different dishes and more seaweed cooking at Cafe Môr and saw The First Solar Powered Seaweed Fishing Boat kitchen the world – arriving at Freshwater West
The lull before the (Covid) storm !!
The Global pandemic hit! like many businesses this pushed the team to the brink and having missed half of our season at Cafe Môr, we were suddenly thrown into the chaos of Summer 2020 where the queues were non stop for 3 months.
“I built an extra kitchen behind the boat just to try and help deal with the demand. Stock availability elsewhere was low and we were forced to close the online shop for several months whilst we focused on Cafe Môr.”
Our experience of large scale catering events proved invaluable and fortunately our fantastic seasoned crew were on hand and were phenomenal in dealing with the never ending queues, always against a backdrop of the threat of covid, not only for us as a team members but also for our loved ones. As 2020 was pre-vaccine, we all had older parents and family members with underlying health conditions to consider, which added to the pressures of simply turning up to work.
“It was the shortest most intense season I have ever had in the business which I imagine was similar for many people. I worked 120 days straight but we survived 2020, everyone was absolutely exhausted and broken. I had my first bath in 10 years and preceded to have 4 a week for the rest of winter to recover.“
“After 2020 the prospect of building kitchens at the back of the fishing boat everyday was not an option, I don’t think my back could take it for another year. Also working 120 days straight was not option either.“
With foreign holidays looking unlikely it was going to be another very busy season, so with the help of a bounce back loan Jonathan decided to get a dedicated mobile catering truck to help tackle the queues and provide the crew with a safer more spacious working environment. Out with picturesque cool looking fishing boat “Josie June” and in with dedicated catering kitchen - in with beautifully efficient catering truck named “Moby”.
Purchasing Moby was a good call as the queue started at Easter and never stopped. During the summer holidays we were doing between 500 and 700 covers a day.
“I am still dumb struck on how we did this day after day and how we managed it against the back drop of huge staffing shortages in the hospitality sector”
The staff shortages meant we had to reduce our opening hours and could only cover 8am - 4pm forgoing our normal summer evening opening times.
“The crew this season have stepped up another level, the intensity of last season now seems like a holiday in comparison to 2021 !.”
Our lovely boat the Josie June is back and now anchored at The Old Point House pub in Angle , SA71 5AS (www.theoldpointhouse.wales) serving our delicious Street Food and Sea Food with a seaweed twist! Set in an ideal location overlooking East Angle Bay and with the added bonus of the pub and restaurant being able to offer you Môr(e) during your visit..........
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