GOODBYE, GOLDHAWK ROAD. HELLO, WHITSTABLE HIGH STREET.
Hello Bearcubs,
We have some exciting news about our little business. In 2016 we started a little ice cream parlour on an unattractive strip of closed store units on a roundabout in W12. We had a small pot of money but made up for that with huge amounts of passion and ambition. Little did we know that the store would become a local favourite, receiver of local and city-wide awards and ranked on some of the country's most notable ice cream lists. Our little strip welcomed some new business owners and the round-about became a small community hub that was worth visiting! During the last 7 years we have had the most amazing but insane ride. Like any small business owner, we have been faced with multiple challenges, such as multiple basement floods, Brexit and Covid. These challenges have however been far outweighed by the joy of seeing the smiley faces leaving our shop, cone in hand, into the W12 sunshine.
Like with any offspring, it is now time for Bears to grow up. In August the Bears family moved down to Kent in pursuit of a calmer life but also to explore all of the incredible, fresh produce that the ´Garden of England´ has to offer. During the last few months, we have travelled around, met with producers and attended the Kent and Medway food business accelerator with other ambitious food businesses. We have been blown away by the incredible produce, creativity and ambition that the county has to offer. We would like to take the opportunity of thanking Growing Kent and Medway and Produced in Kent for having us and connecting us with these incredible producers. Our long-standing dream of making Bears a farm-to-tub company is finally becoming a reality and we are incredibly excited to take our first steps towards working directly with farmers and becoming more sustainable, whilst taking our creative ice cream creations to the next level.
After reviewing the best ways to achieve this dream, we have had to ask ourselves some tough questions. We need a larger space to house our production and after weighing up our options, the only realistic solution was to move our main store and ice cream production down to the 'Garden of England'. We say hello to our new location at 81 High Street in Whitstable. It was not an easy decision but unfortunately, our little shop on Goldhawk Road is now too small to hold Bears‘ sustainable ambitions. Therefore we have made the decision to relocate our Goldhawk Road shop to Whitstable Hight Street this spring.
We will be throwing one last, big ice cream party on Goldhawk Road on the 6-7th of May before relocation. Mr Bear will be welcoming you to our shop and creating some amazing ice cream creations for all. Those who can‘t make it and still would like their Bears fix can visit Bears Ice Cream Pavilion in Brook Green. There we have a new state-of-the-art soft serve machine and Jon and the bear cubs are serving all of your delicious favourites!
We are also thrilled to have partnered up with Outsider Tart at Lyric Square who will be scooping some delicious Bears Scoop Club Flavours all summer long in Hammersmith.
We will be looking to partner up with other West London partners to bring Bears Ice Cream to more people and will keep you posted as our stockists expand. You can sign up for our newsletter here to keep up to date with new stockists, hear about our Kent farm-to-tub journey or discover the new Bears Studio a small, growing range of sustainably produced t-shirts and other items, designed and curated by Mrs Bear. All of the t-shirts are printed to order with our partner in the UK. They work exclusively with organic cotton in a solar fuelled plant and are carbon neutral. Click here to discover Bears Studios.
We look forward to taking you with us on our new journey!
Phil, Vera and The Cubs