Cycling hub and cafe set to open doors
Wargrave: Eagerly awaited coffee shop H’ARTISAN will be open for takeaway only
A new artisan coffee shop in Wargrave High Street is set to operate as a community hub and meeting place for cyclists.
H’ARTISAN, a family run business is set to open its doors on Saturday, initially for takeaway only.
Nick Hart and his wife Sarah, who live in Crazies Hill with their daughter Izzy, brought the freehold for the property in 2018 and have been transforming in into a cafe ever since.
The coffee shop also includes an adjacent ground-floor flat, which the couple have transformed into a space, housing bicycle
racks for 40 bike spaces as well as a sun terrace at the back.
The cafe will be an official Rapha Cycling Club (RCC) partner cafe, and will operate as a community hub and a meeting place for RCC.
Nick said: “Rapha, who have got 20,000 members globally, want to get into communities and drive their brand. There’s only eight or nine partner cafes in the country, so it’s a big deal. We have tonnes of cyclists
coming along this road.”
He added: “We are hopefully going have a bike repair collaboration in with us so that will help drive people here. ”
The cafe is set to sell a range of treats including hot drinks, pastries and cakes.
The couple aim to ‘curate a friendly, relaxed and warm community cafe’, where people ‘feel at home’.
Explaining why they are opening in lockdown, Nick said:
“It’s been a pretty big project and it’s taken this long to get there. We started way before COVID.”
He added that he and Sarah, who is a nutritionist, have been inspired to bring the ‘community feel’ back to the High Street.
“I believe that the future of the High Street lies in the past in many ways, serving our communities with quality products,” he added.