A tennis coach at Leader’s Gardens in Putney, is just over £2,000 short of the £10,000 he needs to reopen the park’s café as Café Lacey.
Leader’s Gardens, Dylan Lacey says, “is where I work, live and socialise.” He has coached tennis there for years, and until it closed at the end of August, also taught PE at Oasis Academy Putney.
The café previously known as Loo Loo’s was run for more than 20 years by Lynne and Amy. Lacey calls them “the heartbeat” of both the café and the park. They decided to move on, and that’s what created the opening for his plan.
This isn’t a stranger buying a failed business. It’s the park’s own tennis coach trying to keep something loved going.
Dylan has already spent his own money on the renovation: gutting the old kitchen, ripping up the floor and clearing out the old units, breaking the shutter in the process, he says. His sister Martha, a working barista in Somerset, is moving to London to run the café day to day as head barista and manager.
He wants the café to feel like the ones he loves in Biarritz and San Sebastián, with the same buzz he finds in New York. Quality is the point, he says: “From the mug you drink from to the seat you sit on.”
None of what’s raised so far is safe, though. Kickstarter’s rules make this all-or-nothing: if the campaign doesn’t hit the full £10,000 by 17 September, backers are not charged and Lacey gets nothing. So far, 94 backers have pledged £7,737.
Backers can pledge through “I bought a cafe last week” on Kickstarter before it closes on 17 September. If the target isn’t reached, nobody is charged, and the half-finished café stays as it is.
