![\"Folk](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/da67307a079cf685700bc5be9eef1e5402482507.jpg\")
Camera IconFolk and Merchant. Credit: Andrew Ritchie\/The West Australian<\/p>\nA favourite caf\u00e9 in a quiet northern suburb will be shutting its doors in just two weeks.<\/p>\n
After five years of serving locals, Folk & Merchant in Doubleview will make its last cup of coffee on May 24.<\/p>\n
Owner Laura Fletcher made the sad announcement on Monday, admitting that while she\u2019s sad about the closure, it\u2019s the right decision for her family.<\/p>\n
\u201cWith a very heavy heart and mixed emotions, I\u2019m announcing the last day of Folk & Merchant,\u201d Mrs Fletcher said in a statement on Instagram.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been five years, and an absolute privilege to serve such a beautiful community.\u201d<\/p>\n
Mrs Fletcher said \u201cthe truth is, running Folk alongside a young family has taken its toll\u201d.<\/p>\n
She thanked the community who made the caf\u00e9 so special and gave a special shoutout to the venue\u2019s first employee, Raija.<\/p>\n
Mrs Fletcher revealed the cafe closure follows half a decade of struggling with rising costs and restrictions.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been a five year struggle not only for us but all hospitality venues: navigating the restrictions we had with COVID, food and coffee price increases, the cost of living challenges and increased bills, which have made it unsustainable to keep going,\u201d she told PerthNow.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe have tried everything to keep our doors open, tweaking the menu, in-house baking to reduce costs but it then increase labour as a result, even events to bring in additional incomes \u2014 unfortunately it wasn\u2019t enough to keep our doors open.<\/p>\n
\u201cIn 5 years I haven\u2019t paid myself, so it\u2019s time to put this journey behind me.\u201d<\/p>\n
Customers of Folk shared their devastating in the comments, with one person saying Mrs Fletcher \u201ccreated the perfect caf\u00e9\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur absolute fave. So so sad but absolutely understand this tough decision,\u201d another said while thanking Laura and the Folk team for making her feel so \u201cwelcomed, loved and supported\u201d on her coffee run.<\/p>\n
Camera IconFolk and Merchant. Credit: Andrew Ritchie\/The West Australian<\/p>\n
Another local caf\u00e9 owner said the decision was understandable, and claimed more business will be heading for closure if they don\u2019t get help.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is so sad to hear \ud83d\ude22and from another local caf\u00e9 I 100% understand all of this,\u201d Little T\u2019s Cafe said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis is where small businesses are heading if locals don\u2019t support us and big businesses take everything.<\/p>\n
\u201cCouncils, landlords and utilities are getting richer while we are squeezed. But Family comes first and you made a hard but right decision. All the best for whatever comes next \ud83d\udc95\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A favourite caf\u00e9 in a quiet northern suburb will be shutting its doors in just two weeks. After…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":665271,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[64,63,99,134,1295,44,47,46,12587,42796,45],"class_list":["post-665270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-business","tag-entertainment","tag-food","tag-news","tag-north","tag-perth","tag-small-business","tag-stirling","tag-wa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665270","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=665270"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/665270\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/665271"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=665270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=665270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=665270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}