Hi,
We’re Darren & Sami and we’re thrilled to announce that we will soon be launching a new business from a shop located in the very lovely Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant, Powys, Wales.
We thought we would use our first blog post to introduce ourselves and talk a bit about our plans for the future.
Who are you?
Darren is a self-employed web developer / geek who through his business, Siftware, just purchased Powys House – that’s the old Post Office to locals – smack bang in the middle of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant. The three story Victorian town house handily has a shop on the ground floor that has been empty for a while. Darren now lives above the shop and runs Siftware from there.
Sami, the human dynamo, is a professional gardener and educator who is in her happy place when growing, cooking and/or eating food. As the shop’s manager she is already working on the project full-time, whilst Darren splits his time between both Cwm By & Siftware.
What are you doing with the shop?
Our long-term vision is for a cross between a Deli selling fine foods, a coffee house, a basic wholefoods store and somewhere to pick up high quality, frozen prepared meals or a bottle of excellent wine for that extra special dinner.
Pretty much everything in the shop will be for sale, including the furniture, and at night the space will be available to rent for intimate private events. We will also be hosting pop-up evenings with guest chefs.
We hope to serve both our neighbours as well as the constant stream of tourists who come to visit the Pistyll Rhaeadr waterfall just a few miles away, as well as the scores of hikers, road cyclists, mountain bikers and everyone one else who comes to the area to explore and relax in the wilderness that we are so fortunate to have here on our doorstep.
The physical shop will be our front-end but we will have strong presence online. With a range of services offered there more geared to those coming into our valley only temporarily.
Overall as a space we want to build a place we’d like to hang out, providing a welcoming atmosphere as well as serving great food and coffee.
That’s the vision, but we need to find our feet first and settle in. Starting small we have two firm phases mapped out in the lead-up to summer 2020:
Phase 1 – collection-only, pre-pay online, veg and selected wholefoods box.
We will write on this more in the coming days but we’re pretty much ready to go within the next few weeks. We will open the front of the shop up from 3pm – 7pm Thursday and Friday for people to collect their online orders veg and other basic staples on their way home from work.
Note: our neighbours who are less comfortable with online ordering will be able to come into the shop and pay for their order for the following week.
As this is going on we will be fitting the shop out, though this might take some time as we’ll be doing a lot of it ourselves.
Phase 2 – coffee & cake.
Now fully decorated and with probably an expanded range of foods, possibly some refrigerated too. We’ll have a small seating area for you to catch the all-day sun* through our huge south facing windows, whilst drinking fabulous barista-quality coffee.
* sun not guaranteed, Wales is beautiful, lush and green for a reason! ☔
What’s with the name?
It’s a nonsensical phrase, totally made up by us. A play on Welsh & English that doesn’t translate properly in either direction.
However, that said, we like how it hints at a few things relevant to us and our surroundings:
Come bye is a common term used by sheep farmers when directing their dogs to circle or flank the sheep in a clockwise fashion. You will hear being called out across valleys in both in England & Wales. There is a strong sheep farming tradition here in our community and this is a firm hat-tip to that.
Cwm means Valley in Welsh and valleys are a huge deal here. The Cwm here is for our very own Tanat Valley.
In English to come by a place means to stop for a visit. It is this last one that really clinched it for us when we were brainstorming names. We very much want to make our business another great reason for you to visit our area of Wales.
So, we hope you do ‘Cwm By’ us in Llanrhaedr-ym-Mochnant some time soon. (see what we did there)
Want to know when we launch?
Enter your email below to be the first to know when we are trading. You will also get a 10% off voucher that you can use on your first order.
