Former Friska cafe in Bristol wins bid to sell alcohol after steep fall in revenue

A former Friska cafe in Temple Quay has won a licence to sell alcohol until 10pm despite a resident fearing the later hours and alcohol sales would create more noise and “smelly bins”.

Double Puc, at the base of the Eye building in Glass Wharf used to be one of eight Friska branches in Bristol until the cafe chain, hit hard by the pandemic, went into administration and was sold in July.

Friska founders Ed Brown and Griff Holland kept two of the cafes – the one in the Eye building and another one inside the Ovo Energy headquarters nearby at Temple Circus – and rebranded them both Double Puc Cafe.

But times are still hard, and many office workers are still working from home, leaving revenue at the cafe at Glass Wharf down 60 per cent on what it was before the pandemic, a licensing hearing heard.

Mr Brown told the licensing committee on Thursday (October 21): “Part of the desire to apply for a licence was to help extend our trading window to be able to offer a broader range of drinks and maybe food to go with that to help make the location sustainable.”

Double Puc is open Mondays to Fridays from 8am to 5pm.

The company behind it, Vela Venture Yard Ltd, which is owned by Mr Brown and Mr Holland, applied for a licence to open seven days a week, selling alcohol from 10am to 10pm, and closing at 10.30pm.

But Diane Hill, a resident of the Eye, objected to the application, saying she was worried that the combination of alcohol and longer hours would lead to more customers, more noise and more rubbish.

She said she was particularly concerned about revellers getting noisier the more they drank, “noisy bin collections” and “smelly bins”.

“When you were Friska and doing the hours that you currently do, they [the bins in the area] were very often full, overflowing,” she told the hearing.

“I don’t particularly want to smell any smelly bins and I’m sure the other residents don’t either.”

Mr Brown said Double Puc could increase the number of bin collections if customer numbers returned to what they were before the pandemic.

He promised they would put signs up advising customers to be respectful of neighbours when smoking outside or leaving the premises.

And he reassured Ms Hill their usual customers were mostly ‘blue chip’ professional service workers and these were the sort of people they expected would come to the cafe for after-work drinks.

Double Puc will sell wine and individual bottles of beer, but not spirits, discounted alcohol or draft beer, he said.

“It’s definitely a cafe not a bar or nightclub or anything like that,” Mr Brown said.

“It’s very much a sort of post-work place for people to congregate and meet, not the kind of the location where you would imagine stag ‘do’s.

“It’s not a sort of heaving drinking vibe and atmosphere that we’re creating.”

The committee granted the licence on the condition that bin collections take place between 9am and 7pm and the owners put up “clear notices where customers leave the building”.