Where we actually are
The family loan sits at roughly £120,000 — and everyone agrees on that figure, which is a big step forward on its own.
Personal loan
£50,000
The bounceback loan Celia & Mike covered, repaid to the bank and lent to Deri personally.
In the building
£70,000
The rest — the original purchase and equipment over the years.
No interest has ever been charged, and none is going to be. A standing order of £200 a month starts 1 August from the company account, reviewed every three months — up if trading picks up, down if it doesn’t. I’ll sit in the middle so you and Mum and Dad aren’t negotiating directly.
Being straight about it: £200 a month against £120,000 is a gesture, not a repayment plan — on its own it would take decades. It exists to show good faith and get things moving. The loan actually gets cleared by the sale, and that’s why the sale is the main push.
The timeline
Three tracks, running at the same time. The sale is the main push, the reopening keeps money moving, and the CIC gets until the new year to prove itself.
Now — end of August
Already stepped once — listed at £240,000, now £220,000 with BJ Properties. Berian takes over talking to Sean from here, so the price conversations stop landing on you. First job is finding out exactly when it listed and when it dropped, so we can time the next step properly.
Launching 1 September, so August is the build: work out what it costs to start, set the menu and the ticket price, and get the booking page live. Standing order of £200 to Mum and Dad starts 1 August from the company account.
Message the four people who already put their hands up. Nothing formal yet — just finding out whether there is anyone real behind the enthusiasm.
September — October
If there is no serious interest, the next step goes under the £200,000 mark — that is where a whole new set of buyers start looking. Sean should steer the exact number, and Berian handles it.
Trading. Friday and Saturday nights, prepaid tickets, set menu. Two or three of these and we will know whether the numbers stack up in real life rather than on paper.
The honest test: can we name three directors? Not vague interest — three people who would put their name to it. If that answer is no by the end of October, that tells us a lot.
November — December
Second step down if it is still sitting. The floor to keep in mind: after agent and legal fees, anything under roughly £130,000 stops clearing the family loan in full.
First quarterly review of the £200 — three months of real trading numbers to look at. If the supper clubs are working it goes up. If they are not, it comes down. No drama either way.
The crowdfunder is the real test: put a page up with a counter and a £50,000 target and find out whether people back it with money, not just kind words. Plus the honest answer on whether this frees you or just renames the problem.
1 January 2027
By this date we know whether the CIC is real or not. If it is, it becomes the plan and the sale comes off the market. If it is not, we stop talking about it and sell the building properly — priced to actually shift.
The price steps are a suggestion, not gospel — BJ Properties know the local market and should set the actual numbers. The point is agreeing now that the price moves on a schedule, rather than drifting for a year at a number nobody is paying. See the listing ↗
The CIC · four questions
The CIC is the most exciting option and the least certain. Rather than letting it hang around as a maybe forever, it gets four questions and a deadline. All four need a yes.
Not you plus two names on paper. Three people who turn up, take decisions and carry some of it. This is the first gate — if it fails, nothing else matters. There are four names further down worth ringing, which is a start but not an answer.
Community shares, crowdfunding, grants, or people simply putting money in. The building needs work and any operation needs a float, so goodwill on its own will not open the doors.
Written down, properly. Who cooks, who runs the floor, who does the books, who chases the funding. If every line says “Deri”, we have answered question four already.
The one that decides it. If the CIC still leaves you as the only one really carrying it, then it has failed its whole purpose and we should not do it — however good it looks on paper.
How we actually find out
A crowdfunding page with a counter on it and a £50,000 target. Sponsor a table, lifetime coffee, that sort of thing — and every backer’s email address building the waiting list for the CIC.
This is the honest test. 128 people said they liked the idea; a counter finds out how many will put money behind it. If it moves, the CIC is real and the goal is repayments up to £2,000 a month. If the counter stalls, that’s our answer too — and far better to learn it from a webpage than from a year of meetings.
The bit that makes money
Prepaid, ticketed, set menu, Friday and Saturday nights. No walk-ins, no à la carte, nobody wandering in on spec. You know the covers and the money before you buy a single ingredient — which is the exact opposite of how the old restaurant worked.
It’s cooking on your terms, a couple of nights a week, with the risk taken out. Whatever it makes feeds straight into the repayments and the quarterly review.
Fri + Sat
two nights only
£35–40
per head, prepaid
~£3,000
target per night
Two things to pin down before September
The maths doesn’t quite close. 60 covers at £35–40 is £2,100–£2,400, not £3,000. To hit £3,000 at £40 a head you need about 75 people through the door. Worth settling which number is the real one before building a plan on it — either a higher ticket, more covers, or a lower target.
60 covers means opening upstairs. The ground floor seats about 50. Using the first floor as well means more setup, more clearing, and probably another pair of hands — which pushes against the whole point of keeping it small.
What people actually said
You asked whether a community model could work in Carmarthen. The response was genuinely lovely — but it’s worth being straight about what it was and wasn’t, because test one depends on it.
242
reactions
128
comments, Facebook + site
0
offers of money
0
offers to be a director
That last pair isn’t a rejection — it’s that nobody was asked. The post asked whether people liked the idea, and 128 of them said yes with ideas attached. Nobody was asked to put in £1,000 or put their name on a company. So the appetite is real but completely untested, and the only way to test it is to ask a much sharper question.
The four worth ringing
Lisa Jane
The strongest lead by a mile. Food science and nutrition degree from Cardiff Met, wants to bake and cook for elderly people, and is actively hunting for premises right now — she looked at the Golden Grove café but needs the outlay. She suggested somewhere like The Warren herself.
Lou Haylock
Asked straight out whether the space can be hired for private events and said she’d email through the website. That’s money, not theory. Worth checking that email actually landed.
Kimmy Morris
Rent it to street food chefs for pop-up evenings. The most-liked comment on the whole thread, so plenty of people agree with her.
Ceri
Commented on the website rather than Facebook. Has her own café concept and a rough business plan, and can access grants — but says she needs a partner for the paperwork side.
Morgan Jones, Dan Hage, Eleanor Shaw and Rachel Vowles all said some version of “I’d love to be involved” without saying what that means yet. Worth a message each.
Two things that came up worth stealing
Three community food places were recommended by name and all publish how they work: The Long Table in Stroud (you’ve already been), Unicorn Grocery in Manchester — a worker-led co-op that puts its whole business model online — and Bluebird Café in Wedmore.
And one person pushed back usefully: Martha Randall pointed out that several Carmarthen organisations already do this, that attendance is often lower than people expect, and that Carmarthen isn’t really a poor town. She might be wrong, but a funder will ask exactly that, so it’s better to have an answer ready.
The thing to fix today
The “Help shape The Future of The Warren” button on your homepage goes to a page that doesn’t exist. It’s been broken for a while. You’re publicly asking people to come forward and the door is locked — that’s ten minutes to fix and it’s probably the highest-value ten minutes on this whole page.
Worth sitting with
These two things have been welded together in your head, and they don’t have to be. Selling Mansel Street does not kill the community idea. It might be what finally makes it possible.
Think about what the sale actually does: it clears the £120,000. That means the community project no longer has to carry a debt, service a mortgage, or justify improving a building somebody privately owns — which was always the awkward bit. It starts clean.
And it doesn’t start from nothing. The sale listing says plainly that the kitchen and store room fixtures and fittings are excluded from the sale, by separate negotiation. Most buyers won’t want them. So a CIC could buy that kit off you — a fully fitted commercial kitchen for a fraction of what a fit-out costs — and take it somewhere with cheaper rent and a landlord who isn’t family.
Plus the name is still yours. So the thing that survives isn’t the bricks — it’s the kit, the name, the reputation and the people. That’s the actual Warren, and none of it is being sold.
What sells
The building. That’s it. Four walls in a spot that costs £750 a month to keep empty and carries a leaking roof.
What stays yours
The Warren name and mailing list. The kitchen equipment. Nine years of reputation. Everyone who commented. All of it portable.
The one thing that doesn’t change
Whatever happens to the building, the Warren name stays yours. It’s explicitly not part of the sale. The name, the reputation, the mailing list — that’s the real asset, and it walks out with you. Sell the bricks, keep the Warren.
