THE owners of a beloved Oswestry eatery say they calling time to try their hands at something new.

Rachel and Darren Davies have put The Old Coffee Pot, in Church Street, up for sale in order to focus on a new direction and their health.

Rachel says the couple made the decision when it became clear that running a full-time café serving restaurant food was becoming too much, as she has auto-immune disease.

This and the desire to try something new in the last few years of working was enough to make them choose a new start.

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“It’s mainly a change in direction for us as we’ve both been in catering for decades – pretty much all of our lives,” she said.

“Darren has been a chef since his late teens and I’ve been working for about 30 years doing restaurant work.

“We’ve worked out we’ve got a few years left of working and we want to do something different, maybe learn a new skill.

“I’m not sure what Darren is going to go into – he might see what is available out there but he can teach as he has his qualification to teach being a chef.

“For me, I’m going to go into crafting as I’ve always made things on the side here, such as my hampers and various different things.

“I’ll do that and still bake cakes but something a bit crafty.

“I can base my hospital appointments around it; I can do it in the evening if I wanted to if I’d been in the hospital that day.

“We were struggling to maintain consistent opening hours with all of my hospital appointments.

“We both need more flexible jobs.”

Rachel added that the business is ‘ready to go’ for any potential buyers but confirmed the pair will still continue to trade up to and through Christmas.

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“We call it a café but it’s a restaurant really as over the years we’ve done a lot of hot food and we do a lot of Sunday takeouts,” said Rachel, who also thanked all of their customers over the years.

“We’re continuing with our Christmas stuff too – I’m making cakes like mad and there’ll be Christmas-based takeaways and we’ll find a way of pulling that off.

“I don’t expect someone to walk in to us and put the money down for the business so we’ll be meeting all of our commitments.”