Hastings: Owner 'over the moon' as well-loved café finds new venue in town

Barbara Brett, from Babilicious, said she has had to ‘start from scratch’ after she had to move from her previous location.

Babilicious was based in Azur on St Leonards seafront, which shut its doors in January 2024 after 16 years due to a ‘long-running dispute’ between the company which managed it, Azur Events Limited, and the leasehold owner Sea Change Sussex.

She said she was told by Sea Change that it was unable to accommodate her business within the former Azur premises when it closed.

At the time Barbara said she was ‘gutted’ over the venue’s closure.

Indra Alison, one of Barbara’s regular customers, even set up an petition attracting hundreds of signatures calling for the café to be reopened following its closure in January 2024.

Thankfully after almost a year and a half Barbara’s café now has a new venue and is based at 5 Harold Place in Hastings town centre.

It opens on Tuesday (July 1) and is open from 7am to 6pm.

The café is based within the premises of Maslow Housing, a non-profit housing cooperative.

Barbara said: “Obviously what I've had to do is from scratch. I've had to get a guy called Jason who was brilliant. He painted all the walls for me first and we've had to repaint the floor and then I've got Nikki to come and she's done all my artwork. She's brilliant. She's done my artwork for me and then she's going to come back and do the rest like what she did at Babilicious for me, loads of birds and flowers and everything else.

“I've had to get all the kitchen done. The basics were there but it's just plumbing the coffee machine in, getting the electrician in to make sure the electrics work properly and everything's plumbed in and ready to go.

“This will work. I just want to build a community like I did at Babilicious. Going forward I will obviously do Christmas Day, do it all over Christmas. If it does get busy and people require it I'm happy to do an event in the evening if somebody wants to come and have a birthday party here with cakes and drinks and stuff like that. I'm open to options.

“I'm over the moon that I'm here. I love it. It's been so good. So good for the community, so good for Maslow Housing and hopefully good for the public as well.”