About Morellos
The Beginning
In August 2020, our family moved to Dartmouth from Goudhurst, in Kent. We'd made the move in the middle of the pandemic, completely relocating for a different lifestyle. We'd been visiting Dartmouth for years on holiday, and knew Devon well; it's something we always wanted to do so decided to jump the gun. What better time to move house than when everything is in lockdown, right? The kids began to settle into their new schools, with Dad, Patrick, transitioning from London commuting, to working from home. At the beginning of September, Mum, Jo, found a little corner shop up for rent on the edge of Victoria Road, opposite the Market Square and decided we'd put our first step forward into starting the cafe/waffle-on-a-stick place we'd been dreaming about, and contacted the Landlord.
It had to be 50's themed, of course.
Early 2021
At the beginning of 2021, we hired our first external members of staff and started to feel like a proper business. We applied to the Dartmouth Town Council for a catering pitch in the Royal Avenue Gardens, in the heart of town. They had advertised a 6 month long lease, allowing local businesses the opportunity to trade in the gardens in hopes to help them through the lockdown. We were awarded the pitch, set up our 1950's converted hotdog stand in the centre of town, and began serving coffee, shakes and crepes to passerby's and locals again. We realised we couldn't trade from both the trailer and the shop at the same time so ended up closing the shop at Victoria Road, so we could continue to trade in the gardens.
Late 2020
Within 6 weeks, the first Morellos was born. Opening on Halloween 2020, unknowingly only a few days before the second lockdown, we began with over 40 milkshake flavours and had our fingers crossed that the locals would like us!
Once lockdown hit, we did our best to stay open and serving our customers; converting to a takeaway only and beginning deliveries up and down Dartmouth alongside creating crazy new shakes and waffles-on-a-stick to serve.
Late 2021
Continuing on the trailer, we catered at our first Dartmouth Regatta, extending our trailer to allow us to keep up with the demand on our milkshakes. In October, we earned our first Gold Food Drink Devon Hospitality award, attending our first award show less than 1 year after opening our first shop. Throughout this time, we began to realise that we were outgrowing our small bricks-and-mortar shop at the corner of Lake Street and Victoria Road and began to look for bigger units in the town. We came across a beautiful corner plot on Fairfax Place, previously trading as the fish and chip takeaway, Skippers. With our eyes wide, and no idea how long the process would be, we started the ball rolling at the beginning of September, hoping to complete on the sale of the unit in time to open our new, bigger Morellos, for Christmas 2021.
Early 2022
We didn't open for Christmas 2021.
The purchase of the lease for 3-4 Fairfax Place took over 6 months to finalise, and we completed, 4 months later than hoped, on 1st April 2022. With a month of the tourist season already behind us, we were against the clock to Morellos-ify the currently nautical blue and very fish-and-chip-shop-like restaurant. We opened our doors to our first customers on Easter Monday (April 18th), after just over 2 weeks of post-midnight finishes, 6am starts and a LOT of RedBull. We were truly and utterly exhausted, but we had no idea what was ahead of us. Now with the capacity to seat 30 people, in addition to a takeaway hatch, we launched a completely new menu and once again, the whole family began to pitch in for shifts (even Grandma did the dishes!) as we settled into our new location.
Late 2022
Since we opened in April, we traded at our second Dartmouth Regatta, served over 15,000 customers, adjusted our menu about 7 times (sorry!), and won our second Food Drink Devon Hospitality award. Morellos celebrated it's second birthday on 31st October 2022 and we made some improvements , which we didn't achieve before we opened our doors in the Spring, to our shop throughout November. Lizzie launched Morellos' Cake Shop in December, selling custom cakes and brownies.