Owners of a Nottingham patisserie closing after just seven months say it was in a ‘bad location’ and they ‘rushed’ into buying the shop.
La Rose Patisserie, based on Nottingham Road, New Basford, initially closed last Saturday (July 1) after opening at the beginning of January.
But the landlord of the property gave the owners an extra week to move out and sell their remaining stock by July 8.
Renata Benbala, 30, from Hungary, and her husband Ali, 31, from Nigeria, own the shop.
Ali is a pastry chef and used to work at a Hilton hotel in London.
The couple, who have a 21-month-old baby boy, moved to the area in February 2016 to start their new business venture the following January.
Renata said business in the first month was good and they were able to make enough money to pay their rent.
But she said afterwards their customers were only locals and it took them a while to set up a website to promote the business, and they were reliant on advertising using the business’ Facebook page.
She said: “It’s sad but we will try again. In January we were open all but three days and we were exhausted.
“It was in a very bad location. There were no people walking around, only locals.
“We are beginners, we have a young family, my husband is a pastry chef and has been for 15 years.
“We thought we would try our own business. We were looking for shops and we rushed into this one without checking it properly.
“We didn’t have a website for a while and we found out the location wasn’t very good and then didn’t put more effort in after to make it work.”
The shop sells French cakes and pastries and Renata says the eclairs and mille feuille, the French name for custard and vanilla slices, were popular.
She says the couple bought two fridges at the start but they were never filled because of the lack of demand.
Renata says the shop is now ‘almost empty’ but they will be selling a batch of macaroons until Saturday.
She says the maroons were also popular as there are not many patisseries nearby which sell them, and they had orders for macaroons until August but had to cancel them.
Renata added: “We couldn’t get ourselves to be known enough. It was good at the start, not very good, but were able to pay our rent.
“We needed to put more effort into advertising – but both of us aren’t professionals and we couldn’t make it work.”
Renata says the couple hope to open another patisserie in Nottingham in the future in a more suitable location.
