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Public toilet converted into bustling London café
While reading the paper and enjoying our daily cup o' joe at Supramatic, we saw this interesting article in the Toronto Star. Would you order a coffee from a cafe that used to be a public washroom? Take a load off and read the article below!
From the Toronto Star:
"Pete Tomlinson is flush with success.
His café, in a renovated Victorian men’s toilet under a busy London street, is a little more than a month old but already pulling in more than 200 customers a day.
“The space we have is probably one of the finest examples of Victorian toilet architecture in London,” Tomlinson told the Star proudly from halfway up the stairwell, where the telephone reception is clearer.
He and a few staff and a chef work in a 390-square-foot space, one wall lined with the ornate 1880s urinals hovering over a wooden counter. The chef and his kitchen are tucked away in the old toilet attendant’s cubicle, with the original “Attendant” sign on the door.
“The Attendant” is in fact the name of Tomlinson’s and business partner Ben Russell’s café, visible from street level only by a small sign on the elaborate cast-iron cupola that had to have 12 coats of very old paint scraped off by hand.
“It was horrible green, lead paint and it took a very long time,” he said. “We could have had it shot-blasted, but that would have been a huge cost and involved a two-metre wide tent that would have affected the pub next door and the news agent beside them.”
To read the full story: click here!
