Eating gluten free products is either a chosen life-style or a necessary one. Many people live without gluten in their diet and today around 80 per cent of these products are sold in supermarkets. The British gluten-free market is worth £238 million and in the last years has grown by 15%. However this has not reflected in what is offered in restaurants and cafes today. Being gluten-free has become a more common thing as celebrity chefs such as Jamie Oliver have created special recipes and The Great British Bake Off dedicated its quarter-final to “free from” cakes. Due to this wide-spread interest in gluten-free products, why are there not many gluten-free tailored restaurants, cafes or dishes available?
Tian and Gill opened their cafe ‘Nineteen Fourteas’ only two months ago in Beckenham and have become a very popular place to retire to for the locals, especially after a long shopping trip at Sainsbury’s. They started their business at home baking gluten-free cakes as Tian has had two years experience at catering college and Gill is a celiac. She knows the struggle of trying to find a tasty wide-range of gluten-free products on a menu. From my own personal experience and intolerance, gluten-free products often have a grainy texture which is not ideal. Therefore both Tian and Gill have spent much of their time perfecting their own blend of flour to create the perfect mixture and remove this grainy texture.
With business currently going well; their cafe was buzzing with lots of people sitting in their beautiful white chairs with comfy cushions eating picturesque cakes whilst drinking tea when I entered midday on a Saturday. Therefore, after a year’s business they will look at their statistics and decide whether it would be a beneficial to expand to another location.
They serve cakes, bread, and sandwiches which are all gluten-free; this is a lot more practical for those with an allergy to gluten as they have a whole menu dedicated to them rather than just one option. As gluten-free cake still has the same delicious essence of a regular cake, locals can hardly taste the difference. Therefore the cafe caters to vegetarians, gluten-free eaters and everyone else. Their menu varies for different occasions; they tailor it towards the festive periods, for example, during Halloween they served pumpkin pie and pumpkin soup. During December and the Christmas period they offer Christmas Turkey sandwiches. This keeps them current and fresh.
It has become increasingly more important, as they agreed, to have more cafes, shops and restaurants that cater to specific needs as it becomes harder and harder for some people to eat out. Therefore I think that more places such as ‘Nineteen Fourteas’ should be opened or more options should be available for the ever-growing demand for gluten-free products.
Rosalyn Burton, Colfe's School
