'I'm living out my dream': West Midlands mum-of-four takes over café she used to work at as a teenager
It has been a whirlwind few weeks for a woman who has taken over a cafe she said she had loved since first working there as a teenager.
Rachael Timmins has taken on the ownership of Piccolos on Load Street in Bewdley, completing a journey which started as part-time work nearly 20 years ago.
The then-16-year-old first starting working at the cafe, which was actually an Italian delicatessen called Galleys, and said she had been associated with it as Galleys and as Piccolos ever since.
She said: "It was in 2007, just before my 17th birthday, when I started working here and I would slice all the Italian meats and everything and we would sell olives and cheeses and all those items.
"From there, it turned into a café when someone else bought it and while I have left over the years to have children and other things, I've gone back and forth and I think I've worked with every owner who has been there since.
"I've always loved it as well because the customers are regulars and were regulars years ago and still are today, so it's not just me who keeps getting drawn back to the place and it's just a lovely little coffee shop."
The 36-year-old said she had found herself wanting to buy the café while working there at the end of 2024 and kept offering to buy it from the owner at the time until, just before Christmas last year, she said he offered to sell and she agreed to buy Piccolos.
She said there had been nerves about taking the plunge, but said that it just felt right, and after opening on March 1, she said that while the café offered what it did before, she'd made a number of changes.
The mum-of-four said: "I've got four kids and while the youngest one is four, he's at school, so I felt like it all happened at the right time and I was ready to go into full-time work with this, which it certainly has been.
"I have made changes because when I did work here, I always wanted to get stuck in and bring in things I felt were missing, like bacon baps, which I added and which has been really popular, like on Saturday, when we sold 30.
"I've listened to what people wanted and I was always noting down in my head while I worked here what I could do with the place and it's worked, such as homemade cakes that my mum makes and a specials board which is doing really well and which will change as the seasons change."
Ms Timmins said the support of the town had been really good, with a lot of people offering help and support and coming into try the food and drinks on offer.
She said: "Everyone knows everyone around here and it's quite a close community, and there's people like Jason, who runs the vintage shop, and who ran over today and asked if I was still open, so it's that sort of place and is just lovely.
"I've had so much support from everyone, from the staff to my parents to my husband James and it's just wonderful to have the place.
"What I would say to people is come on down and you'll see that it's great in the cafe for a laugh and a chinwag and you feel like you're sitting in your front room, so I just love the atmosphere."
