UP CLOSE: Karen Mercer, owner of Shepton Mallet shop My Coffee Stop

Shepton Mallet Nub News aims to be supportive to every element of the town's community from business and shops to people and charities, clubs and sports organisations.

Everyone is finding it tough at the moment and is desperate to get back to normal.

We are profiling some of these local businesses and groups regularly over coming weeks in a feature called UP CLOSE IN SHEPTON MALLET in the hope that we can be a supportive springboard for their full return to business as usual.

Today we talk to Karen Mercer, the owner of the Shepton Mallet shop My Coffee Stop, who shares her thoughts on living in the town and her plans for the future.

During an in-depth Q and A session she also talks about what she would change in Shepton Mallet to make it better for businesses.

****

Tell us how did you come to live in Shepton Mallet and what were the key considerations about moving here?

My partner Gunter Hollenstein and I, with our children Joshua and Elijah, were living in Winchmore Hill, North London, and were running My Coffee Stop in a difficult trading position, at the wrong end of a train station platform at Enfield Chase Station, and within six months of starting up, we started to win business awards for innovation. I had always said that I would never leave London, I used to be a traffic and travel presenter on the radio and loved doing it, and just couldn't imagine doing that anywhere else.

However, when Gunter and I set up our first shop, we wanted to expand and create another little shop, with the same ethos, concentrating on sustainability and contributing positively to our community. I searched for potential locations on RightMove and nothing suitable came up in our area, so just for fun and daydreaming fodder, I kept expanding the search area by 40 miles, again and again.

I had a Dragon's Den-type voice in my head saying: "If you're really serious about opening a second shop, you'd look across the whole of the UK, not just in your local area." That is how we stumbled across a cute looking shop, that used to be a sweet shop, in a place neither Gunter or I had heard of before, Shepton Mallet.

One fine sunny Saturday July 7, 2013, I believe it was, we came to visit and look at the shop. At the moment of our viewing sunlight was streaming in through the windows and we said yes, immediately.

I suddenly announced that I wanted to live in Shepton Mallet and we looked at a flat down the road, on the same day, with the same estate agent and we said yes to that too. My Mum and Dad asked if we had sat outside in the car and seen what the place was like at midnight, to see if it was suitable and I just thought: "Parents!"

There were no considerations in moving here, there was just an attraction to the place and a spontaneity and sense of adventure. For most of my life, I have seen myself as a city girl, I needed 24-hour shops and bagels in Brick Lane and cinemas and theatre, the tube and public transport but when I really thought about it, I liked the idea of those things but now with children my life had taken a different turn, my priority wasn't those kinds of things, my priority was my children and I felt pulled towards Shepton Mallet because it is small and quiet, and very full of character. I had also noticed that the High Street was unique in being crammed full of independent shops and it wasn't a clone style High Street.

Tell us a bit about your personal business background Karen and how you ended up starting My Coffee Stop?

Right from the beginning of my working life, I seem to have had a strange combination of creative and entrepreneurial spirit, I danced all round the world, sang on jingles and as a backing singer. One of my best moments was hearing a jingle I'd created with a producer on Radio 1, on the Steve Wright show, while I was working as a photographic assistant, no one believed it was me.

I had my own Independent Record Label, when I was about 22 years old, with my boyfriend at the time. I was a singer, he was a producer and we made music together.

I was responsible for the finances, marketing and PR, as well as singing on the records and writing collaboratively. We broke up but we are still good friends, even today and funnily enough Gunter gets on really well with him.

I had a breakdown when I was 24 and started dancing in nightclubs to get out of the debt I had accumulated while I was unwell. I went on to dance and sing jazz, blues and soul in Austria and then, to my surprise, without trying, I started getting studio sessions for singing work for adverts and jingles, as well as backing vocals for bands, both in the studio and live.

I met Gunter in Austria and felt attracted to him and felt in love with him at first sight. He tells me, that he fell in love with me when I sang You've Got a Friend, so he offered me a gig in his bar. We've been together since then, which has been for nearly 25 years now.

While I was in Austria, I started getting ill again, so we moved back to the UK. I didn't feel able to sing and my body was hurting too much from dancing, so I decided it was time for a change of career.

I tried being a traffic and travel presenter on a local radio station and loved it so much, I decided it was my dream job. I went on to do travel bulletins across nearly every radio station in the country, including Talk Sport, Classic FM, Choice FM, BBC London and several more.

I really enjoyed doing that because I got to speak for a whole minute without anyone interrupting and I love maps and patterns, so it brought together a lot of things I'm into. I did that for 10 years and when Joshua was born, Gunter was the one that mainly stayed home, while I still worked.

Then, when I was pregnant with Elijah, things changed at the radio station where I was working and they offered me my job but working through an agency on half the pay I was getting. Gunter and I decided it was now his chance to do his dream and his dream, was to open a coffee shop. So, just after Elijah was born at the end of 2008, we opened My Coffee Stop on February 3 2009, in Enfield.

What do you like about Shepton Mallet? How are you involved in the local community?

I love the architecture, the history, I am almost obsessed with the Market Cross, it is so beautiful and I have to keep taking pictures of it, in all different kinds of weather and lighting situations. Shepton Mallet is such an attractive town but not in that self-aware way, it's not all polished and posh, it has real character and grit.

I often think that the streets and alley ways of Shepton Mallet would make beautiful film locations. I don't know why it hasn't been used more really.

I really enjoy walking down by The Meadows, where there is a little footpath and there are horses on either side, that looks so gorgeous in the sunshine, our town is extremely photogenic.

The people in Shepton Mallet are amazing, either they are locals who have strong family connections here, or they are other people who have been attracted to Shepton, just like us. Both sets of people feel passionately about how much they love Shepton Mallet.

I have to say that I have been to many different places across the world, including Taiwan, Korea, Japan, Norway, America, Holland, Switzerland and it was Shepton Mallet that made me move from where I was, from one of the capital cities in the world. Shepton Mallet is indeed, a really cool place, the trouble is you don't want too many people to know the secret, otherwise, they'll come and spoil it, I feel protective over Shepton now.

When I first arrived in Shepton Mallet, I was heavily involved in the community, now, I am a little bit more reserved and have to use my energy wisely. I helped to lead a successful fight against Timpsons operating and taking business away from The Shepton Cobbler, with an online petition.

I have supported the prison remaining as an attraction in our town, rather than unimaginatively being turned into flats. I try to help the community through our shop, we encourage our customers to contribute to the local Shepton Food Bank by buying items from our shelves, for us to donate to them directly.

In these coronavirus times, we have set up a way for people to give a contribution online, so that we can pick the items needed off our shelves, quarantine them for three days and then give them to the food bank, so they can be given out immediately.

We also have a Spread The Love initiative, where you can contribute online and a treat will be randomly added to someone's shopping because during these difficult times, a little action like that can bring some joy and hope, to someone. The treat is given anonymously and the person giving it doesn't know who it's going to either.

Sometimes, the receiver is someone chosen at random and sometimes, we specially select someone who has been having a particularly hard time. This idea was suggested to us by a very kind and thoughtful customer, who started it off with a very kind contribution. Sometimes, when the treat pile is empty, we contribute the little surprises off our own backs, to keep the positivity and love going.

Since recently winning an award in retail, that has given our confidence a boost, so we are helping other local businesses where we can, by putting their products on our website, so that our customers can order them, as part of their weekly shop. For example, there is an award-winning jam maker in Hembridge in the Shepton Mallet area and we have now started stocking their jams, hopefully this helps during these difficult times.

Another example is The Nestcake Caravan, they provided me with an exquisite handmade cake for my 50th birthday, during lockdown. That cake brought me so much joy, I wanted my customers to be able to easily add a treat from The Nestcake Caravan to their orders from us, so now they can simply go to our website and order six cupcakes for the weekend. The Nestcake Caravan also does their own deliveries but I hope it enables others to know about them and to experience the amazing talent, of this local cake-maker.

Before the first lockdown, we set our sights on raising money to help the Mendip School to build a swimming pool through selling second hand books, the books are only 50p and we already have a small amount of money from our short time of doing that but I did get rather distracted a bit by the pandemic. I will settle down and focus on putting those books on our website soon, so that people have access to cheap books and so that we can continue to raise funds for this extremely good local cause.

The coronavirus pandemic has had an impact on many businesses and organisations - what are your plans?

The coronavirus outbreak has probably been our biggest challenge in business and instigated the biggest and most dramatic change for us in our business model. Overnight, in March, we transitioned from a coffee and zero waste shop, into essential and ethical groceries with no contact.

We thought of everything we could to make shopping as low risk as possible for our customers and for ourselves. We realised that for us, as we are both "clinically vulnerable", we needed to find a way to continue trading, with no contact, which would of course be safer for us and our customers.

I contacted our customers via social media and email, and offered them free delivery of essentials, if they were isolating, or had to be at home and they messaged me back with their shopping lists. I also had allotted pick up times, at the shop, where pre-ordered shopping would be left out on a sterilised table, outside our door.

This was to ensure there would be no queues and minimal waiting times, to keep our customers as safe as we possibly could. We stopped providing the service of any spontaneous purchases, as we wanted the transaction to be as quick as possible, we didn't want to encourage people to stop and browse, and potentially cause queues and have to be in contact with other people, as we realised the more people came into contact with each other, the more their chance of catching or spreading the virus increased.

Putting that strict attitude into context though, we are are incredibly fortunate that at the moment, transmission rates in our area are low and other businesses have operated differently to us but still in a Covid-safe way, where they have plastic shields installed and larger spaces, so that social distancing is possible. That was another difficulty with our shop, when the two-metre social distancing rule came into place, we realised that our premises were just too small to keep open to the public during these times.

We are quite lucky because our doorway is undercover, so the shopping stays dry, while people collect it but the fresh air means the ventilation is good, which lowers the risk factor, for transmission. Eventually, we teamed up with the card payment provider, Square Up, when we found out they were offering small businesses the chance to have a free website, during these extremely difficult trading conditions.

It was perfect timing, I had developed a Google Form for people to put their order through on but our range of products was getting larger and the new website meant that people could order, choose their own individual time slot and pay, all online. This made shopping and ordering a lot easier for my customers but also a lot easier for me.

During the first lockdown, my oldest son Joshua was at home studying for his A-levels and Elijah, my youngest son, was being taught by me at home and it was proving to be incredibly difficult to run the business so that it could survive and help people with the products they so desperately needed, as well as giving my sons good positive attention and helping Elijah with his education.

I'm in the middle of a plan right now. I am sitting in the middle of a very higglety pigglety shop, I am sorting out items that we have accumulated over our seven years' trading here and I am thinking of the short-term future, as we make our way through this second lockdown and thinking about the future, when spring comes and I feel we will all have a better understanding of how life will be, either living side by side, with this virus, eradicating it, or suppressing it.

I feel it will be one of those things that we will have to live with and adapt to, rather like the flu. I do think different groups of people react differently to this virus and I have heard reports that when communities are tested up to 80 per cent of people can have the virus and not know it, they are asymptomatic, for the virus this is a massive strength that ensures it's ability to survive and keep on infecting us, however, if most people won't know they have it and if hospital treatment becomes more effective and as we learn more, we won't be using lockdowns as a way to supress the virus.

Clinically vulnerable people and extremely clinically vulnerable people will probably still be at risk of a highly negative outcome if they are infected with this virus, so I believe that Gunter and I, no matter how the rules change, are still going to have to be very careful. It would not be a good situation for us to run a coffee shop in the same way as we did before, with people sitting comfortably on couches, chatting for hours and solving the world's problems.

This won't be sustainable for us economically or health-wise. I reckon, in the future, Gunter and I will be running our shop, much as we are now, as an ethical grocery store.

If we ever do get to switch the coffee machine on, it will be for takeaway coffees, for people that have been shopping with us. I envisage not using takeaway cups though and only pouring coffee for people that bring their own cups or mugs, so that it's a more sustainable and eco-friendly way of operating.

What other businesses do you like and use in Shepton Mallet?

In normal times, I usually use as many businesses as I can in Shepton Mallet. At the moment, I have been using businesses that will give me a contact free service.

The Nestcake Caravan is my go to for birthday and celebration cakes, I love the way her cakes are designed. I don't like cakes with marzipan and icing, these cakes are topped with fruit, or drizzled with chocolate, or sometimes topped with sweeties.

Talking of sweeties, The Fairy Godmother delivers sweets and we all need something sweet from time to time, as a morale boost, what a life-saver during lockdown, on those long walks.

Ciabattino's, my whole family loves it when we don't feel like cooking and feel like we need a treat, Ruth actually makes me a pizza that's not on the menu, probably because no one would like the combination I have chosen.

Bumblez have been great for plopping my order outside my shop door for me, they are just next door to us.

The Hive - we treated ourselves to a delicious cream tea for Father's Day and Mike ensured my scones were vegan and they are great for those useful things you didn't know you needed, like a replacement zip, I need to go there for thinner elastic for my facemasks actually, as the elastic at the moment is making my ears protest and stick out.

The Cheeky Bean, I enjoyed a gorgeous smoothie a few weeks back and I'm looking forward to treating myself to their delicious vegan banana and chocolate bread with peanut butter and maple syrup soon, this lockdown.

Just before this lockdown, I visited The Shepton Book Shop, Sheena is very kind and knows that I feel safer standing outside and she served me there and I bought some books to get me through lockdown.

Hong Kong Garden and Sunrise Chinese Takeaways are both excellent and implemented safety strategies very quickly into their operations.

All through the year, we frequent shops such as Dredge and Male, Denela's, Peppers, The Shepton Cobbler and lots of other places such as The Art Bank, Shepton Brasserie and the Collett Park Cafe. We are so lucky here in Shepton, there's an excellent choice of shops and businesses.

Most of our weekly shopping is done through our own shop, as we have all the essentials, especially if you are vegan, like me. The boys in the household are meat eaters though and we have been getting a contact free delivery from F Griffiths and Sons, who although not based in Shepton, are in Wells and Glastonbury.

Our fruit and veg is collected contact free from Wells Fruit and Veg at Rocky Mountain Nursery on Thursdays. Their fruit and veg is consistently good quality and I can order online and then just pick up at my allotted time.

The boys have been going to The Barbers on Town Street, run by Mandy. I hate having my hair cut but I allow Mandy to do it from time to time. Mandy is actually very good with helping autistic children to have their haircut. She gets Elijah used to the idea and connects with him really well. She's lovely.

As a business owner in Shepton Mallet, I feel a great responsibility to spend my money wisely and make sure that I support the local economy by buying from other businesses around me.

The lockdown has been very difficult for many people - how do you think that Shepton as a town has coped?

The main difficulty with this period of our lives, I feel, is choosing our own individual way, that we are going to get through it and cope. The next difficulty is understanding that not everyone is going to feel the same way and not everyone is going to respond in the same way.

Some people feel safe, some people don't feel safe, some people feel more comfortable now than ever, as life is less hectic and there are less demands, or less traffic, less socialisation and less noise and others feel bereft because of the lack of company, of touch and hugs, of chatting and going out in the evening and spending time with friends. All of this is taking its toll on our collective mental health.

I feel Shepton Mallet, as a community has coped extraordinarily well, I have experienced first hand how people come rallying round, when you need help on a personal level, or if you need help to help others. Over the half-term, we had a brilliant response from people coming together to help us accumulate more food to help the Shepton Mallet Food Bank, when vouchers for families that need free school meals were suddenly stopped in the holidays.

I also feel very proud of Shepton Mallet, that in this second lockdown the businesses on the High Street are more ready than ever to keep going and keep trading anyway they can, safely and within the rules of course. I am really pleased to see that most businesses are this time offering a click and collect or pre-order service and I think this is an excellent morale boost for our town, as an individual it is an amazing morale boost for me, I don't feel so alone in my business and also, as a customer, I can't wait to treat myself and my family to some lovely things, that will keep our spirits up and hopefully help other businesses survive.

If there was one thing in the town you would change, what would it be?

This town is a very small town, it needs as much help as it can get, there are bigger towns than this, where the parking is free, for three hours and then you have to move on, or pay for extra parking time. I feel the one thing that could help this town is free parking for three hours everywhere, not just at the retail parks.

If there were two things I could change in this town, it would be that there were patches of grass and greenery as part of the design of the High Street, I do find it strange that there are no trees in our pretty town centre, or even bushes.

If there were three things I could change in this town, it would be that Haskins started selling Hornby again, as it is now one of Elijah's special interests, in fact he secretly (not so secret now), wants us to turn our shop into a Hornby selling shop!

Have you and your business won any awards from the industry - can you tell us about those and what they were for?

I can't remember all the awards we have won but I will try to mention the ones I can here.

North and West London HSBC Innovation in Business award, My Coffee Stop, Enfield, for our Book Swap initiative which raised more than £2,000 for Chickenshed Theatre, where people put a donation in the tin and took a book, that would have just gone to landfill, or been recycled.

Smooth FM Best Coffee Shop in North London, we won Silver for the local coffee shop awards but the one that won Gold, was in South London, so winning in North London sounds better.

More recently, we are very pleased to have won the Shepton Innovators in Business Award for Retail in 2020, for the way we transformed our business to cope with the challenges of trading during coronavirus and how we contributed to our community with donations from our customers to Shepton Food Bank.

If you could choose one famous person to play you in a movie about your life, who would it be and why?

It would have to be Meryl Streep, not because I think I look anything like her but she is a fantastic actress and she would definitely do my accent correctly.