An award-winning vegan café has announced it will be closing after five years of "struggle and anguish". The owner of Eat Your Greens in Totterdown has called time on their café after spending all their savings and not being able to pay themselves a wage for two months in a bid to save the business.
Owner and chef Babs Greaves opened the plant-based cafe on Wells Road in 2018, quickly attracting customers for its brunches and Sunday roasts using seasonal ingredients. The café will be ceasing its brunch service on Saturday (July 8) after a "very quiet few months".
In a statement shared on Instagram, Babs said the café had "absorbed the rising costs of the last year for too long now". "The business just can’t take the financial hit anymore. We can’t afford to be empty," the post read.
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Reflecting on their announcement to BristolLive, Babs said: "I would have earned more money and ended up in less debt - I have no savings left, and I have a large amount of debt now - if I’d just worked a regular 9-5 job and not tried to be an independent person. I’ve lived on less than £12k a year for as long as I have run EYG and it has been five years of anguish and struggle."
But even after a tumultuous five years battling the pandemic and the cost of living crisis, Babs told BristolLive they didn't feel like a failure. Eat Your Greens has received hundreds of five-star reviews over the years, with customers praising the delicious food and generous portions.
"The only things that have kept me going are the immense joy that the customers have for the food, the community around EYG, and because I live for the creativity of cooking for people, it is my deepest love. That will never be taken away and thankfully I will remember that for the rest of my life."
Babs has not been able to pay themself a wage for two months but has continued to pay their staff. They said they have anguished over trying to make things work and change the business model to no avail, with the costs of running a business and not wanting to charge customers "a shed load".
They explained that the "real nail in the coffin" for Eat Your Greens was the Government's Covid-19 grants and furlough scheme, which they accepted to keep the café afloat and ensure their staff were financially safe. This had to be recorded as a profit of £37k for that financial year.
"I kept my staff on with the furlough scheme so they wouldn’t be out of pocket, and as a result, I have had to pay thousands of pounds of tax on that as if it was my earnings. I have had to take out a loan to pay HMRC what I couldn’t pay with what little money was in the business account.
"We were just starting to recover from that tax year, and then with the cost of living crisis our turnover halved, bills doubled, food costs up by nearly 20 per cent, insurance up - we are slain."
Babs added: "We are raised to think if you just work hard and honestly then you’ll be alright, it will all come good in the end - but really I don’t think that’s the case at all. Not with this government. We need systemic change. It’s so depressing."
Eat Your Greens is the latest independent vegan business in Bristol citing rising costs as the reason behind their closures. Last month, Future Doughnuts on Oxford Street said it had "run out of ideas" and "money" to keep the business going.
Babs said the whole hospitality system is "running on unsustainable methods and ideals" in the UK. "There’s so much food waste based on ‘offer the most range you can, on the idea that someone might come and choose it on a whim’, it’s not realistic and it’s sickening."
They continued: "I have always tried my hardest to support other local businesses and growers, paid my staff a real living wage, worked myself and my body into the ground trying to please everyone and make sure they’re eating things that are lovingly made and well sourced. I feel like our economy doesn’t have space for us ethical independents anymore, it’s all favouring the Tory values of take, grow, grow, extort, extract, smash and grab."
The last ever brunch service at Eat Your Greens will be this Friday and Saturday (July 7-8). Eat Your Greens is planning to host a limited run of Sunday roasts and supper clubs in August, and will likely close after this period.
