A long-time cafe owner has put her much-loved seafront business on the market after almost two decades at the helm.<\/p>\n
Debbie Clarke has run Seaview Cafe on Tankerton Slopes since 2007, serving hundreds of thousands of breakfasts.<\/p>\n
Seaview Cafe owner Debbie Clarke has put her business on the market after almost 20 years<\/p>\n
However, the 65-year-old has decided it is time to sell up, having committed years of her life to 70-hour weeks year-round.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does get hard, it\u2019s very hard, but I know I’m going to miss it,\u201d Ms Clarke said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI’m so undecided about going; it is my life up there.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the same time, I\u2019ve missed a lot \u2013 my daughter lives in Spain now, and I can\u2019t get out to see her much.<\/p>\n
\u201cVery rarely am I able to get over and see her and the grandchildren because there’s always something.<\/p>\n
A busy day at the Seaview Cafe in Tankerton. Picture: Azure<\/p>\n
\u201cI’ve got to do this or that, or somebody can’t work that week \u2013 it’s quite difficult getting away from the place completely.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I can\u2019t do six or seven days a week, it\u2019s too much for me and my health isn\u2019t what it used to be.\u201d<\/p>\n
In her time, Ms Clarke has served a wide range of customers \u2013 including Michael Barrymore, David Essex and former MasterChef host Gregg Wallace.<\/p>\n
But she says it is the locals that form the \u201cbeating heart\u201d of the cafe.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re a community and it goes a long way,\u201d said Ms Clarke.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
The Seaview Cafe in Tankerton has been run by Ms Clarke since 2007<\/p>\n
\u201cEspecially for the older people in the area, we’ve got a lot who just come in just for a cup of tea and a slice of toast and they’ll sit there talking to the people next to them.<\/p>\n
\u201cI just keep everything consistent. If somebody comes in for breakfast on a Monday, they can come in the next Wednesday, and it will taste and look exactly the same.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe girls all cook how I want them to cook. If I wouldn’t eat it, I wouldn’t serve it.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt’s as simple as that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The business has now gone up for sale for \u00a3200,000 \u2013 but Ms Clarke admits she had rejected offers in the past and will be \u201cquite fussy about who I\u2019m going to sell to\u201d.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve put it off for three years, but now is the right time to do it,\u201d she added.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think they\u2019d be silly to change it, it\u2019s been here almost 100 years.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A long-time cafe owner has put her much-loved seafront business on the market after almost two decades at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":533936,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[84,59,2759,192,191,56,54,55,2557],"class_list":["post-533935","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-business","tag-business","tag-gb","tag-herne-bay","tag-human-interest","tag-kent","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-whitstable"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533935","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=533935"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/533935\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/533936"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=533935"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=533935"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=533935"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}