The Plot Deli is another one of Newton Abbot’s best kept secrets. Just a little walk from the High Street, you’ll find the beautifully painted front of the café. From shelves filled with locally sourced goods, to fresh food served daily, The Plot Deli has plenty to offer. But it’s also a community-led and community-focused space, from workspace days where people can use the café as an office with unlimited teas and coffees, to poetry nights where many writers gather to share their stories.
Owner Kris Hanson has always had a hand in food and charity, working at various restaurants in Cardiff and Exeter, and running community interest companies such as Feed South Devon. Despite facing hardships during COVID, Kris adapted to the changing economic climate which led him to open The Plot Deli, as he shares his experiences below.
What lead you to open The Plot Deli?
The Plot Deli came about because of The Plot Catering, as it started with growing all our own fruit and veg on our own allotment. As we grew and grew, I realised we could never grow enough on our own allotment to make the company viable, so we outsourced to local suppliers instead. All the local products we sell in our shop were all the products we were using in our catering, from Devon sea salt down to the oil from Bell & Loxton.
When we first opened, we started The Talking Shop where people could come into the deli to have a chat with free tea and coffee. It never took off, but the whole idea of developing the space as we did was that we could have a community hub and show the work of local artists, so we expanded our offering into the café.
What is business like for The Plot Deli in Newton Abbot?
Overall, it’s really good in Newton Abbot. We’ve got a good relationship with a lot of the neighbouring retail shop owners as the business community here is very tight knit. We’ve recently had Wellbeing in Action open as well as the Good Karma Store opposite, then there’s a jigsaw puzzle and bookshop further up the road. People don’t know it’s all there, but there’s so much actually going on in Union Street.
The local community is awesome, everybody is really friendly, and we don’t have any issues with anybody. Maybe it’s because we’re tucked out of the way, we avoid any problems, so there’s always an upside to things.
The biggest bonus about having the deli for me is, because we’re quite a small business and work daytimes only, I can come and leave work at half two to spend more time with my kids, which is amazing.
How do you foster community spirit through the café?
We have Poetry by the Plot organised by two ladies where any writer can come in and read their work, or play music; for example, we had a girl that brought a keyboard in and sang a couple of songs. We don’t charge money for it, we just let people come use the space, and I like to write as well, so it’s just a really nice vibe in here when it’s on.
In fact, there’s a local homeless chap who comes in with this little book he writes in about his life experiences, and he’s got some of the most amazing poetry I’ve ever heard. So it’s awesome that we could discover him as well.
We try to do a lot of charity work here too. I’m raising money for THAT Foodbank which I’m a part of. Any stuff past its best before that we can’t sell goes to The Salvation Army down the road. We were recently fundraising for No Limits Community Café because they were having an issue with funding and needed to raise a certain amount of money quite quickly.
How did you get involved with the Argentinian mural artist Seba Cener?
Seba Cener was only in the UK for a short amount of time because he was doing a big mural up in Peterborough, but he was also doing a mural at the back of his mum’s house in Newton Abbot. He popped into ours one day, I asked what he can do on the front, so he did the designs on Sunday and came on Monday and Tuesday to finish it, so it was really cool that he drew that in such a short amount of time. Even now, it catches people’s eyes, then they come in and realise that they’ve been walking past our café all this time!
What have been the difficulties of managing a café and deli?
We’re literally thirty seconds away from Newton Abbot’s High Street, but not many people walk up here, so it’s been a very slow process of building a customer base and becoming a viable business. There have been a lot of moments where we’ve wondered if we’re going to make it, which is a knock-on effect of the cost-of-living crisis and everything else going on at the same time.
However, we’ve got a good base of locals and regulars that come in and see us and we’ve started to do more food, which is where we’ve been seeing our sales. In hindsight, I wonder how often people really buy a jar of jam, so that was where we needed to diversify.
What exciting events have you got planned for The Plot Deli in the future?
Local author Simon Tozer will be booking in to do a talk here about wild swimming in Dartmoor. We’ve got a lady who’s coming in to run a crochet workshop, then one of the ladies that does the poetry night wants to do a creative writing workshop. Hopefully we’ve got someone coming in to do a Christmas wreath workshop, so we’ve got quite a broad mix of events in the pipeline.
Have you got any advice for people wanting to open their own café?
Location is key if you’re starting up with not a lot, because it really takes time to build that customer base if you’re not in people’s faces. That saying ‘out of sight, out of mind’ is very true with businesses if you’re tucked away, but if you’re friendly, have a good offer and treat customers well, they’ll come back and see you.
I’m very lucky to have lots of young staff who are really proactive with social media platforms like TikTok and Instagram; being on top of social media is a very important thing in this day and age.