Child-friendly cafes: at last! Decent coffee and safe soft play

The coffee shop revolution on our high streets means that most of us are spoilt for choice when it comes to looking for a stylish, independent café to meet friends or do some work.

But once young children come into the picture, the selection becomes more limited. Your favourite coffee joint might not be the best place to take an energetic three-year-old. Soon you find yourself swapping cappuccino and cake for chicken nuggets and cold chips in a noisy, subterranean soft play centre.

At least this was what Melody and Tom Beard discovered after their daughter was born.

“We were sat in a soft play centre where there were no windows, it was in a basement. I just thought, 'Oh my God, is this what your life’s like after you have children?’ ” Melody says. “I wanted cake and a cup of tea, somewhere above ground. Where I felt like I have some personality.”

^{Renu Anderson and Jane Price have a coffee at the Full of Beans Play Cafe, Highbury, London while the kids are playing}

She says the problem comes for parents with children between the ages of six months and five, at a time when you can’t take a child to a restaurant or café because they can’t keep still, or suddenly decide to throw a tantrum.

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The couple decided to create a space where children could play, but where grown-ups would still get the full coffee shop experience: “A lot of places that cater for children don’t really care about the adults. We still like good drink and good food. It’s about families enjoying their time together, but it’s also about the adults.”

Tom adds that the idea was for the café to be somewhere they would go themselves: “We’ve tried to create a place that we both want to spend time in, with or without children.”

The couple now run the Hungry Caterpillar in Bristol, which has proved to be hugely popular since opening just over a year ago. Quality food is an important part of the ethos, particularly after their time spent eating lunch at soft play centres. The menu features homemade Middle Eastern food, including falafel and lamb meatballs, while the kid’s mezze offers a range of healthy options.

“It’s all fresh, nothing’s processed. We’ve got a lot of vegan and vegetarian choices. We make everything ourselves and have our own chef on site,” Melody says. “We’re trying to create a proper café with a play area attached to it.”

The Hungry Caterpillar is one of a number of play cafés opening up across the country, as parents increasingly look to bridge the gap between soft play centres and the trendy coffee shops they went to before they had children. While the kindercafé movement took off in Berlin five years ago, making the city a great destination for families, the trend has only just started to gain momentum here.

Iliana Baughan, a mother of two from Highbury in London, also spotted a hole in the market during her time on maternity leave: “A lot of people go from wanting a really modern speciality coffee shop, where they can get decent coffee and nice food. And then when you have children, there’s not a lot for you.”

She says that in the past she never felt relaxed when taking her young children into coffee shops: “We would never stay for long because you would feel conscious of them being noisy, and the kids would get restless. I kept thinking someone should open something for the mums.”

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From the outside, Full of Beans has a shabby-chic feel, fitting in well with its trendy north London competitors. But once inside, the coffee shop is Tardis-like, accommodating a colourful soft play area and plenty of seating in the back.

“The décor had to be nice, the environment had to be nice, it had to do really nice coffee. But it also had to have things for the kids,” Iliana explains. “When we first opened, one of the nicest things was people coming in to look at the soft play and going 'wow’.” There are also regular activities on offer, including story time, a French class and a “Tiny Tempo” music class for toddlers.

^{Children enjoy the soft play area, while parents watch on and have a coffee}

The seating at the back means that parents can keep an eye on their children in the soft play area, while enjoying a cup of coffee. Iliana says that she wanted to create an environment where it was possible to catch up with friends, as she had struggled to meet up with other mothers once her eldest son learnt to walk.

Heather Baker-Swinburn, who opened Thé, Stay and Play in Chesham, Buckinghamshire, a year ago, says that she had a similar experience. “It was always embarrassing,” she says. “There wasn’t really anywhere to take them. You either couldn’t get in somewhere with a double buggy, or you were made to feel unwelcome.”

When working as a child minder, Heather found that other customers were often rude: “It was comments like, 'I can’t believe she’s letting them run around’, 'Who does she think she is?’, 'Children should learn to sit down and do what they’re told’.

“A child can sit still but after 10 minutes they’ll get bored. All they want to do is go out and get back into the park. And I have to say my children weren’t particularly badly behaved.”

She says that very few mothers feel happy going into coffee shops with young children: “Every mum I have ever spoken to has said the same thing, almost without fail. Mothers who have been working often find that their social life has completely diminished.”

A survey by the National Childbirth Trust found that a quarter of mothers didn’t know other parents in the area, and nearly half said they were worried about getting out and about with their baby in the first few months. The majority said they didn’t see their old friends as often now that they’ve had children.

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For Melody the feeling of isolation became an issue after having her daughter Ellie: “I felt quite alone. I was the first of my friends to have children. I don’t drive, and there weren’t that many places that I could take her to. She couldn’t talk yet, and I just thought what am I going to do at home by myself all day.

“These places are opening up for mothers and fathers to meet other parents and grandparents. We have people that come to us everyday, and they just want to have a chat.”

In fact, play cafés are so popular that Melody regularly gets other parents contacting her for advice about opening their own: “You see one, and it sparks the idea. It’s a community service; they’re servicing a need.”

Iliana has also noticed that more and more people are recognising the need for family-oriented spaces, and plans to open up another coffee shop in the near future: “It’s really nice to know that other people are thinking the same thing. A lot of mothers come in and say, 'I wish you had been here when I was younger.’ ”