Nurtch Coffee House: Nurturing the Local Community
06/10/2023
A welcoming gathering place is important to a community, and nobody cultivates this better in Ashington than the Nurtch Coffee House. A local touchstone that distinguishes itself with not only its warm environment, delicious food and drinks but also in the support it brings to local business and the opportunities it offers to young people looking for work experience.
Nurtch is owned and managed by couple Emma & Michael. Emma is from the Northeast and has a deep interest in nurturing communities. Michael is from Sheffield and is a trained chef with a passion for teaching others. Located on Milburn Road in Ashington, they opened their doors on 5th December 2022 with the goal for Nurtch to be a space to make friends and enjoy a delicious homemade menu. They wanted the business to be customer led and love that their regular customers have such ownership after only 9 months of business.
Michael told us: “The name Nurtch itself comes from the word Nurture as that’s a big part of what we do”
In addition to running a café, they also do all they can to help the local community. They support other local businesses, using their services, bringing footfall, and promoting each other. They also offer training and work experience to local people.
When discussing the inspiration for their business and what it offers Emma said, regarding their work with young people: “Michael is deaf, and has experience of the difference good tutors, opportunities, and inclusion can make. He knows what it is like to seek and start employment with a disability or a barrier and is committed to giving people real chances.”
“Most recently Michael was teaching young people with additional needs hospitality and barista. He’s been training local people (mostly young!) who can benefit from the opportunity – perhaps they have additional needs, or school has not worked for them, or this is their very first experience of work and we are keen to support that so they can see what good employment looks like”
With a business so in touch with its community, it was a perfect fit for Nurtch to engage with Accelerate Ashington to take advantage of the business support services available to them. As a small business with active social media & a functioning website they were the perfect candidate to receive a digital marketing campaign.
When accepting Accelerate Ashington’s support offer, Emma’s main goal was to bring more people into the café and increase their reach. With this objective in mind, Allies Group, the marketing experts working with Accelerate, helped to develop a campaign that would promote the business location, promote their Facebook page and increase brand awareness. All with the explicit drive to get more people to engage with the business and visit the café.
Emma said in reference to the support provided by Allies: “We were supported by Allies in a really bespoke way – to develop a Facebook campaign, they really worked with us, and paid attention to the things that were important to us.”
After running this campaign, the results were reported to Emma, and they were exceptional. Not only did they see an uplift in footfall, but they also noticed a significant increase in engagement through their social media channels. New faces were coming to the café who had previously not been aware that they were around.
“Having a sounding board was initially helpful as neither of us has ran a business before, but the marketing campaign was really smart and resulted in increased footfall and income, which afforded us the ability to take on 5 young people over the summer holidays and look again at our staffing needs earlier than planned – which is great! We were also given a report which showed where we could spend our marketing budget to greatest impact, we simply don’t have time to find these insights, so this is so helpful!”
It is safe to say that the Marketing campaign was a big success for Emma and Michael, and they could not be happier. When asked whether they’d recommend the programme to others they told us: “It’s worth it, they meet you where you’re at and the support is varied and appropriately paced. Be clear about your business and the ask, and they’ll do their best to help!”
So, if you are in the local area and want to see all this for yourself, drop in and say hello.
For more information about the programme you can contact the team at: AccelerateAshington@advancenorthumberland.co,uk