Over the summer we have been getting started on this year’s big project. Those of you who shop at Spa Terminus may have seen a very discrete sign in the new build of Dockley that says Monmouth Coffee – 2024. Now, whilst we are not entirely sure about the timings, we are sure that we will be moving our current Discovery shop to the Dockley units as soon as we can.
We have looked around for several years now for a location for another shop and have seen many fantastic sites during these years, but they have all been missing the something that we have managed to find right under our noses. We wanted to open a six-day-a-week shop somewhere around other specialist food stores, maybe close to a Saturday market, certainly close to a serious food shopping destination. Hilariously it took walking around the new site at Dockley with some prospective tenants to really open our eyes to the possibility not only on our doorstep, but also part of our Spa Terminus project alongside Neal’s Yard Dairy and Matching Green.
We have taken the lease on Units three and four Dockley Estate, ripped out the wall between them, and are now putting up walls for the loos and a staff room. We’ve pretty much finalised our plans for where the coffees, grinders, filter rack, espresso machine, and croissants will go. Over the next few weeks, we are concentrating on first fixings for plumbing, electrics, and planning for the ventilation units. Light shades have been ordered, chair samples are en route, and the floor finish has been chosen. As we will be closing the Discovery shop when we relocate to Dockley, we have been able to reuse many of our fixtures and fittings so there isn’t much in the way of new counter tops and equipment to organise.
The new site is big; it has a bigger floor space than our shop in Covent Garden (although that doesn’t take much) and bigger than our shop in Borough Market. It will have a large sharing table (like our one in Borough Market), and a low-level leaner section will run almost the entire length of the shop, so there will be plenty of inside seating and room to spread out. We also have plans for outside bench seating depending on council permissions.
Planning and building out our new site is really a group effort. We’re very much old-school when it comes to drawing up plans and much has been done with some graph paper and a 1:10 scale. Our maintenance team are organising all the building work and our carpenter (Tom) with whom have worked for decades, is doing all the cabinetry and oak work. He will be disassembling the counter units from Discovery and putting them back together in Dockley, if, in his words, he can remember how they were put together.
Let’s hope.
Monmouth x
