Help! We accidentally opened a restaurant!

So what happens when you decide to open a nice easy 9-5 business and you end up owning a Tapas restaurant?

Well first of all you find a business right in the middle of Newcastle, yes Newcastle, commit to a 6 year renewable lease on a Health Food business and spend lots and lots (obscene lots) of money for Newcastle City Council do a 'slight change' on their offer to a three year non renewable lease with an unconditional 90 day break clause. Oops, engage reverse, beep, beep, beep, narrowly avoiding a disaster. Never mind, regroup and go back to a lovely building we had seen in Hexham some six months earlier which at the time didn't have a clue what to do with; we thought second time around we now did. As a footnote, that business closed not long after we retreated like Napoleon from Russia and the site remains vacant to this day. A lesson for NCC possibly?

Hexham, like many Market Towns, had seen happier days and we thought despite covid, cost of living crisis, plagues of locusts, zombie apocalypse etc things were soon to get better. With signs of new independent business start ups and an already thriving social events calendar, Queens Hall, Cinema etc, etc there was a good base which we could become part of. OK we thought, let's get in at the bottom as the only way is up and as Alan Sugar once said "If you can see a bandwagon it's already too late!" The horses were just being hitched up so yippee-ky-kay mofos, let's get going!

The site was full of charm and character as well as lots of bags of rubbish and the largest spiders we have ever seen in this country. We were given the keys on the 4th July and the difficult work was just about to begin...........