A reflection of our first season at Cafe Croyde Bay and our plans for the future

Way back in March when we were just coming out of the winter season and the end of Covid was in sight, Surfing Croyde Bay found its new home in Croyde at Baggy Lodge and we were also invited by the new owners of the building to run the existing cafe. We recognised this was an opportunity to provide our customers with an additional service that complemented the surf school, so we said yes!

Our aim with Cafe Croyde Bay was to follow Surfing Croyde Bay’s ethos, by providing the best experience and an excellent service to all our customers, for it to be a place where our staff enjoy working and somewhere they are proud to be part of. We wanted to keep everything as simple as we could with the food we provide, ensuring that we use local ingredients and produce.

One of the main assets in our first season has been our staff, many of them are from the local area and some of them joined us after having a surf lesson, they liked what they saw and wanted to be part of it, some had never even worked in hospitality before and their enthusiasm and hard work paid off, everything fell into place, making them all an essential part of our team and we know we have been very lucky to have them all. We were also lucky to have a few supportive campsites in Croyde and thank them all for hosting our seasonaires, Freshwell Camping, Ocean Pitch, Cherry Tree Farm, and Combas Farm.

We knew when starting up that we wouldn’t be able to find staff straight away and wanted to be open in the evenings too. With this in mind, we contacted local food truck businesses in the area that provide great food and asked them if they would like to use our kitchen as an opportunity to offer something they couldn’t normally.

Tess at Hippy Happy Hoppers embraced this and provided a different menu each week for two nights, with her amazing Sri Lanken food, and was with us all summer, Thongsay Thai Catering Popped Up, with us until June providing their delicious authentic Thai food, and then along came Cluck! Lou and Sam were working on building their food truck and jumped at the chance to be able to Pop Up in our cafe with their Fried Chicken Burgers and Fries! 

Most of our seating this summer has been outside and thankfully we were blessed with plenty of good weather, so everyone was able to enjoy great food and drink with the amazing sea view we have here.

So what’s next? We’re planning to remain open over the Winter season every day from 9 am until dark and we’d like to become a place for our local community to have somewhere to go during the shorter days. This may be naive of us but we’d like to give it a go and hope that our locals will support us by using the space.

Earlier this month we launched our Autumn/Winter menu. We have kept some of the favourites you are used to and included some awesome winter warming breakfasts, lunches and some delicious daily specials, which are freshly prepared by kitchen staff. 

Don’t forget that we’re right on the South West Coastal path, with parking next door in the National Trust Car Park and we welcome all walkers to use our cafe for a warming coffee, tea or hot chocolate, we can also provide you with a takeaway lunch if you’d like one.

We now have additional seating in our conservatory so we can now move indoors as the days get cooler. We still have the opportunity for local foodies to pop up in our kitchen, so if you’re a local foodie who would like to use our kitchen and cafe, please do get in touch we’d love to hear from you. We plan to have our own Pop Up Pizza evenings, we’ve introduced a Curry and a Pint evening and will be having a Saturday Breakfast club, we’re welcome to your suggestions too!

We had our first Croyde Surf Club meeting last week and they plan to use our space as their ‘unofficial club house’, the brand new Croyde Camera Club will be using us as their base. We have a large space which could be used for Yoga classes over Winter and we could provide a healthy breakfast too! The options are endless, so if you’re a local group or club that would like to have a new place to host your gathering, meeting or class, come along and speak to us! 

We like to support local businesses when we can and now sell Appledore Sourdough loaves, which can be pre-ordered and are delivered still warm on Saturday mornings. We also stock Komunitea which is brewed locally in Braunton!

Thank you to everyone for your support over the summer months, we’ve had a blast!

If you’d like to keep updated with what’s happening in our little corner of Croyde keep an eye on our stories and posts on Instagram @cafecroyde or on our Facebook page.