Award winning cafe has been put up for sale

An award-winning restaurant in Kirkby Lonsdale, which is due to play a starring role in a new film, has been put up for sale by its owners.

John and Renata Strange have put The Crossing Point Café up for sale with a guide price of £165,000 for the lease plus a weekly rent of £413.

The Crossing Point Café, which is in the town’s Market Square, was opened by the couple in 2014.

It has since won the 2016 Cafélife Gold Award, been a finalist in the Cumbria Life Food & Drink Awards in 2016 and 2107 and features in the 2018 Waitrose Good Food Guide.

The couple set up the business after Mr Strange, who was at the time working as general manager at Michelin-starred chef patron Simon Rogan’s Rogan & Co restaurant in Cartmel, went out for lunch in Kirkby Lonsdale and identified a gap in the market and a spotted a suitable premises for sale.

He said: “At the time the café offering in Kirkby Lonsdale was mostly very traditional so we saw there was definitely a market for a more modern menu and approach, and we decided to go for it.”

The café, which now includes a loose-leaf tea, wine and cigar shop, has been operated as a lifestyle business by the Stranges, opening from 10am to 4pm six days per week.

Mr Strange added: “After many years working very long hours in the hospitality business we wanted to do our own thing in a way that would provide us with a good living while giving us our lives back and allowing us to take some nice holidays, and that’s just what we’ve been able to do.”

However, Mr Strange now plans to open up a new restaurant with a business partner elsewhere in the North West.

And he intends to focus full-time on another business run by the couple, The Tea Keepers, which supplies loose leaf tea to outlets ranging from independent cafés to Michelin-starred restaurants.

The Crossing Point Café, which boasts distinctive powder blue signage and paintwork, occupies a prominent position in Kirkby Lonsdale’s market square.

It was chosen as one of the locations for the forthcoming film The Voyage of Dr Dolittle, which stars Robert Downey Jr, Emma Thompson, Martin Sheen and Ralph Fiennes.

For the filming it was transformed into a hatters shop, Cropp & Watson Royal Hatters, and the signs that will appear in the film have been kept as part of the café’s frontage.

In its most recent financial year The Crossing Point Café turned over £100,000, yielding a gross profit of £60,000 and is currently operated by its two owners plus three part-time staff.

It has seating for 36 covers and a fully equipped kitchen.

The wine and cigar shop also boast a humidor for Cuban cigars which are particularly popular with the various hunts that meet regularly in the Market Square.

There is strong demand in the town for the café to open as a restaurant in the evenings and he also believes that turnover could be increased.

Nikki Jones, listings manager at Blacks Business Brokers, said, “Over the past four years John and Renata Strange have created something really special in the heart of Kirkby Lonsdale, and achieved great success while running it very much as a lifestyle business.

“A new owner could either come in a carry on as they have done, making a very comfortable living with a really nice business, or expand into evening opening and make the most of the Crossing Point Café’s undoubted potential.

“The business would be ideally suited to someone with a background in hospitality looking for a change of scene and pace.

“Kirkby Lonsdale is a beautiful town that has been named in the top five places to live in Britain and occupies a fabulous location between the Lake District and Yorkshire Dales national parks, so The Crossing Point will provide its new owner with not only a brilliant business but also a fantastic lifestyle to go with it.”