WITH hindsight, it was an expression that could have been expressed more tactfully. “Give ‘em fancy cakes and sweet pastries,” began the Evening Times’s ‘On the Town’ correspondent, “and Glasgow folk are a bunch of Billy Bunters.”
Aside from the reference to the fictional, food-loving schoolboy nicknamed ‘the Fat Owl of the Remove’, it’s possible that the writer had a point; the recently-opened Kenco Coffee House, at 123 Buchanan Street, was selling twice as many fancy cakes as any of the company’s shops in England. “The astonishing sale of cakes and pastries in Glasgow,” remarked Mrs Anne Louvois, an area supervisor from London, “is something that has quite amazed us.” Such was the demand for chief patissier Harry Reichelt’s coffee gateaux, rum baba and chocolate eclairs that he had ordered new fridges to cope with the extra output.
Snacks, sandwiches and salads were also sold, and a table licence had been applied for.
The shop itself, the Evening Times added, departed from the traditional type of Scottish tea-room with its tea and plain scones; it had a “London standard of elegance”, with warm copper walls, a cool turquoise carpet and a cedarwood slatted acoustic ceiling.
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Herald Diary“The thing that really attracts people ... is a glittering row of wheels, all spinning like mad in the window,” the article continued. “Behind the spinning wheels are the gleaming Jorgensen coffee mills, the world’s most up-to-date coffee-grinding machines.” Fourteen different blends of coffee were available.
The most popular blend, according to Mrs June Adamson (pictured), who was in charge of the shop area, was the one labelled ‘West End’.
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