Smaller businesses in Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly reach more than £16 million in lending

One of the latest businesses to benefit is surfing collective, House of Glass, based in Newquay, who have launched a café as a community space for surfers.

Partners (in life and business) Ellen Caldwell and Kourosh Zahedi were keen to launch a cafe that would also act as a base for their surfing collective. “We wanted to revive surf culture by providing a space where people could come together,” says Ellen.

The House of Glass café, in surfing mecca Newquay, was born, and the duo received a £15,000 loan via partner GC Business Finance to fund premises and four staff (including a chef and baristas), stock and marketing. The result is a trendy coffee shop serving a single-estate roast (sourced from The Roasting Room, a mere stone’s throw away) with French pastries and lip-smacking savoury focaccia bread.

Ellen said the financial boost from the Start Up Loans programme “enabled us to take a seasonal trade year-round, providing higher class facilities than we would otherwise be able to afford so we can meet expectations as a premium brand. Without that money, we wouldn’t have been able to make the year and would have had to pare back massively. It was a survival bucket, a steady hand over the summer that will now enable us to grow.”

Louise McCoy, Commercial Managing Director, Small Business Lending at the British Business Bank said: