Coventry man who invested life savings into café says scaffolding has 'crippled' his business

[dutchman]

Stuart Hiorns invested his life savings into running Bean, Sandwich and Patisserie on Warwick Road



A Coventry man said his thriving café has been 'crippled' by scaffolding placed around the building. Stuart Hiorns invested his life savings into running Bean, Sandwich and Patisserie on Warwick Road.

Stuart, 41, said he has faced major footfall issues since the metal beams were installed around Central Building in February. Friargate owns the premises and last year conducted surveys of the balconies that were deemed 'unsafe.'

Surveyors suggested the building be demolished rather than repaired. Stuart said he is being evicted after just one year in business and is 'absolutely devastated.'

Speaking to CoventryLive, Stuart said: “Scaffolding has completely crippled my day-to-day business to the point where I would be surprised if I even have enough money in the bank to pay the rent at the end of this month, so I am going to be shutting this place down in the next month or so. I am having to basically relocate my business after only being here a year and investing all of my life savings.”

Stuart is now hoping to move into West Orchards Shopping Centre. He said: “We will hopefully be moving to a new location in the city centre, but, in that, it means that I have lost all of my investment in this building. I will have to find more funding via crowdsourcing to be able to keep not only my business alive but also keep people employed.”

Before the scaffolding was erected, Stuart said his business was thriving. He said: “We have built a very good following, and we had a really great start to January. We were hitting our targets most days, and then as soon as the scaffolding went up, we were back to sales figures like I saw in February and March last year when we first opened.”

Seeing his business struggle has been absolutely devastating, Stuart said. He explained: “We expected to be here the next six to ten years building the business, which we would then eventually one day move into a better location when we needed bigger space and the business could support it because it had that time to recoup its investment.”

He added: “I have just lost a ton of money, and I have basically become a very poor benevolent investor in the city centre.”

[dutchman]

Been in that position myself, know exactly how he feels!