While the alleyway cafe’s days may be numbered, owner Jayde Regassa does not believe she will forget about the regular warning any time soon.
The steps caught people off guard “every single time,” Ms Regassa said.
“I will probably be saying, ‘mind the step,’ for a very long time, even when I’m not here.
“It’s so built-in now.”
Due to a change of tenancy at the building, the cafe, in Albion Pl, would be open for the last time on August 8.
It had just this month celebrated its 10th birthday, which also served as an “accidental” send-off, Ms Regassa said.
“But I wanted that to be a party, not a funeral, so I didn’t tell anybody that we’d found out earlier that week about the situation.
When word got out about the closure, everybody was “devastated”, she said.
While she had considered relocating, it would have been too expensive and there was nothing suitable in the immediate vicinity.
Were the lease not ending, she could have “gone forever”.
“I turn up and I do it for the people that come in here, so I don’t want to go somewhere else and do it because I just like my people.
“If I can’t do it for my people, I don’t want to do it.”
Her regular clientele formed “such a wonderful wee family”.
“Everybody cares about everybody.
“We end up with cafe-wide conversations, which I don’t experience really anywhere else.”
For nearly all of its life, the cafe had run a “pay it forward” programme where customers could pay for other people’s coffee.
It was a shame this would not continue, but she hoped another cafe could do something similar.
Ms Regassa said she planned to take some time to “be a bit sad” and work out what her next move would be.
The people would be what she would miss the most.
“But getting up at 5am in the morning and coming in and doing all the baking might not be that hard to miss.”
tim.scott@odt.co.nz
