The proprietor of Crofter’s Cottage, the council’s coffee shop at the Standing Stones, is leaving in anger at the way she says she was treated during the Australian Celtic Festival.
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Colleen Gibson said she was hurt by the way the business she’s built up was disregarded and blocked by the festival.
“I’m very cross because I’ve put my heart and soul into this town’, she said. “We love the people and we love serving the community and also encouraging tourism so just to be disregarded and not thought of when we’re here seven days a week working our butts off, that really hurts. And I’m hurt.”
“Two days prior to the Celtic Festival, the car park was cordoned off by line markings with no consideration of trade to Crofter’s Cottage. We lost a day’s takings there”, she said.
“The next day they put up signs saying it would be a tow-zone. People weren’t coming in so we lost a day’s trade there as well.”
The premises are owned by Glen Innes Severn Council but leased to her.
She said she made her unhappiness known but her views were disregarded so she’s off to start a new business in Armidale from the end of June. She said she had been in the town for more than 15 years and running Crofters Cottage for four.
The council says that her views were taken into consideration. She was offered, for example, a free site for a stall on the festival field itself but turned it down. The configuration of the site was the same as the previous year, is the council view.
The restaurant proprietor said that she was unhappy at having a marquee outside her business during the festival as well as competing food sellers on the festival site. “There were 16 food stalls, three of which sold coffee and there were also coffee vans. And we also had a marquee parked right in front of us which directed customers back into the centre of the festival, so yes, we were actually in the red.”
The mayor, Steve Toms, said the council had been “very supportive of Crofters for many years.
“There’s been a lot done to promote the site and Crofters is a business on the site.
“We are sorry that she feels upset but the reality is that the lay-out of the Celtic Festival has been very similar for the last few years”.
It’s not known what will happen to the business after Colleen Gibson and her husband leave. Another coffee shop connected with the council (situated at the Town Hall) remains closed six months after the business stopped last year.
