This is Kay. He's opened a deli where Hornsey Road meets Tollington Way, i.e. across the road from Tesco's and down a bit.
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| Kay, smiling |
The shop (called Organic Stall) is a delight. There are tables by the window where you can have a coffee and watch the world or at least the subset of it that hangs out on the Hornsey Road go by. There are wooden crates of fruit and veg stacked up in the middle of the floor (I can recommend the apples) and the shelves are full of what mumsnet would call 'naice' things: posh apple and carrot juice, fancy chocolate, upmarket tea, good tomato sauce, healthy baby food and so on.
I can also recommend the brownies.
In other words, it sells the kind of stuff that you had to schlep down to Waitrose on the Holloway Road for, and that's only worth doing during a zombie invasion.
Kay's looking for feedback on what to stock, so go tell him if you want to be able to buy spelt flour or ginger jam locally.
I really want this place to do well because the Hornsey Road needs some luck, but also because its success would prove a theory of mine right.
The theory is that when high streets struggle it is often (or at least sometimes) because the shops are too downmarket.
You'd never guess it from the shuttered shops, or from the scruffy takeaways and newsagents, but there is money near here. Within a half-mile radius there are two bed flats on sale for over £500k and a house to rent at £925 a week. There is also a hell of a lot of poverty and gentrification is a mixed blessing, but it's been frustrating to see shops struggle because they aren't pitched to attract the new demographic. I don't know why this happens (perhaps because posh people don't tend to open shops?) but it is bloody annoying.
More on this theme in the aspirational Luton blog
Gentrification is never a good thing.. this shop is a disgrace, and expensive I could make 2 pints of milkshake for the cost there.
ReplyDeleteIt will basically just push the house prices up and make others feel more imadequate. I'll keep going to Devran next door where there are friendly staff, good produce at decent prices.
This area is one of the few places in North London that students can afford, with shops like this, rent prices will go up and the demographic will become even more middle class.
Do you really want Hornsey Road to become full of up-their-own-arse people? I'll be glad when this shop has gone, or it stops promoting overpriced organic bull.
Gentrification is never a good thing.. this shop is a disgrace, and expensive I could make 2 pints of milkshake for the cost there.
ReplyDeleteIt will basically just push the house prices up and make others feel more imadequate. I'll keep going to Devran next door where there are friendly staff, good produce at decent prices.
This area is one of the few places in North London that students can afford, with shops like this, rent prices will go up and the demographic will become even more middle class.
Do you really want Hornsey Road to become full of up-their-own-arse people? I'll be glad when this shop has gone, or it stops promoting overpriced organic bull.
Hello D.
ReplyDeleteNo, I don't want Hornsey Road to become full of 'up their own arse people.' I write this blog because I love the scruffy variety of the area. That's why I've written about the Platform youth centre and the Hamlet Cafe' and the Eaglet and how beautiful the Andover estate is.
I don't love the empty shops though
and if we only have shops aimed at the poor the result won't be an idyllic working class community, it'll be a lot more empty shops, what with the poor by definition not having much money to spend. We need cheap mini-markets like Devans, but we also need delis, music shops, jazz restaurants and CAMRA friendly pubs. We need the people on £100k a year to spend their money here or we might not have a high street for much longer.
You're right that London housing is expensive, and you've every right to hold the views you do on gentrification.
But my God it's unfair to blame one tiny business for house price inflation, and unkind to hope that they close. A 'disgrace'? Seriously?
If you're interested in housing policy read the Kate Barker report, or Martin Daunton's 'A Property Owning Democracy' or look the IPPR and Shelter websites for a more recent and left-leaning take, or Policy Exchange for the free market view, or one of a tonne of other sources. It's a huge complicated problem and a guy trying to make a living by selling nice (or naice) food is not the root cause.
D, you might have noticed that even with a high street full of chicken shops and bookies and estates where the Krays would fear to go and yet still the house prices around here aren't exactly cheap. So we may as well have some nice shops eh? Seeing as how I've spent a lot of my hard earned money to buy a flat round here I'd rather have this so that I can choose to go in there if I want. You don't have to go into the shop just like I don't have to go into the adjoining kebab place if I don't want to.
ReplyDeleteHi all,
ReplyDeleteI was thinking of starting a business at the top of Hornsey Road next to Ariston estate agents.
I'm looking to open a coffee shop. A coffee shop where people from the area can come and enjoy excellent coffee and food prepared by passionate people.
It would also be a space for art exhibitions (free gallery space), comedy nights, cocktails, wine and sharing platters.
Ive run a shop before in haggerston and now want to start nearer where I live in Crouch End. The problem is that the rents pretty much everywhere don't enable start ups to make enough money to sustain themselves. the property im looking at is one of the only venues i've seen that could just about fit into my business model.
How do people feel about having a modern coffee shop in the area?
Evan - I'd be a customer for your coffee shop. I think you'd do well. Just look at how Joe has turned round the Shaftesbury. Pop in there on a Sunday lunchtime and you'll see some of your target market. There are a lot of creative/freelance types (weekday), and others (weekend), around who'd welcome a break/working space that is not run by a multinational conglomerate who doesn't pay tax and who don't want to have to walk over the hill to Crouchy/Nappy Valley for it. I also have an idea for your opening exhibition - it would give me the impetus to restart my "People of Hornsey Road" photographic project.
DeleteAll the best for your business idea!
Jane
Hi Evan,
ReplyDeleteThe architecture in that crescent is good and there are well-off people nearby who clearly don't spend much money in the local shops. A coffee shop like you describe could do well, but it's always a gamble. Are you on twitter and may I mention this there?