AN OKEHAMPTON cafe owner says she and the other independent shops and eateries in town would love to open longer hours for visitors arriving on the new trains — if money could be found to cover the extra costs.

Battle-weary after two years of covid, they cannot take the risk of extending opening hours without some help, says Rebecca Green, proprietor of 3 East Street and founder of the Okehampton Area Business Owners forum.

’We are all still here and we are all hanging on but until we are busy in the hours we are open we can’t afford to increase them,’ she said. ’The only reason a lot of us are still in business is we have cut hours and days. We are on our knees.’

She said that while the new train service, which started on November 20, had brought her more lunchtime trade, she would still make a loss if she stayed open until 5pm in the winter months.

’We are definitely busier because of the trains, but only in the morning,’ she said. ’There would be no trade in the afternoon. I currently open from 8am until last orders at 2pm from Tuesday to Saturday.

’If you open these longer hours, you only cover your costs. You lose the profit that pays for staffing and extra bills. When I’m full for those two hours at lunchtime it means I can pay the rent.

’We absolutely do want to be open for longer and we would be if people would support us enough to be able to do it,’ she said.

’I think there would be a gap between everybody agreeing to open until 5pm and building demand from people coming in on the train. I would put that at about six months to actually make it worth our while opening for longer, but who funds that in the meantime? That is the problem.

’We need people to understand that it isn’t the fact that we don’t want to open longer hours. It would be lovely to take that risk, but who is going to pay that extra £27 it would cost in wages alone to stay open for another three hours?

’We recognise that we need to be open more days and more hours but it is who is going to pay the staff bill when there isn’t enough customers and none of us can afford to take the hit because of covid?’

She added: ’At the moment we just feel lucky that we haven’t lost any businesses, so although the hours and days are not necessarily what people might want them to be it is better that they are there and have not closed down.

’If you look at other towns, there are so many empty shops, but the only ones in Okehampton are my old one and one in the Red Lion Yard. It is amazing and it is something that we should absolutely be celebrating, that the town has supported us.’

She said she and other businesses also made a point of supporting each other.-’All the Totally Locally stuff we have been doing is about supporting other businesses. I have a policy of recommending two other businesses if anyone comes into my cafe.

’We want to say thank you to the people who are supporting us and to say please keep supporting us in the hours that we are open and once we are busier then we will be look at opening longer hours.’