THE GRAND OPENING!
It is with a huge sigh of relief and great enthusiasm that we announce the opening of the Oval Cafe!!!

Last week the staff of the Oval crammed into the cafe to pray God’s blessing on this new ministry and enjoy the first fruits of their labours. Since the dream of our own cafe began to turn into reality, it’s been a journey of wonderful provisions and challenges to move forward, but it’s all worth it to see the Oval Cafe buzzing with smiling people happily drinking their beverage of choice!
Our public opening was a huge success, supported enormously by over 300 participants from a youth camp hosted at the Oval who flooded the Cafe with orders for smoothies and iced drinks on the hottest weekend of the summer so far.

Whitney Randall, manager of the Oval Café at YWAM Harpenden, is committed to providing excellent service and quality products. “I made my first real coffee when I was 17,” she said, “but I didn’t drink coffee and I didn’t understand coffee”. “A gazillion” cups of coffee later, she now loves the art of coffee, humbly calls herself a Barista, and has been responsible for training YWAM’s volunteer staff who will run the Oval cafe so that all profits can be returned to the charity.

Coffee lovers will appreciate Whitney’s experience which has been applied to all the stages of the production of a good cup of coffee. From sourcing fresh-roasted beans (fairly grown, of course) in an exclusive blend, to timing the perfect shot of espresso, there is no compromising your coffee experience here. Tea lovers are also catered for with a superior brand of tea in 14 different flavours available. Smoothies, milkshakes and Italian sodas are very popular with the younger crowd, the youngest of whom are well catered for with their own play area.

Atmosphere has been carefully considered to provide a welcoming environment for YWAM staff, students and the public. Free wireless has lured many out of the confines of their offices and early opening hours may even mean we’ll see more YWAM staff than usual before 9am!

YWAM Harpenden manager, Tamara Neely, explains the ethos behind the Oval Cafe, “We felt the need to create a place for our volunteers to hang out together and enjoy one another’s company. But we wanted to share that sense of community with all our friends – not just the ones in YWAM! So we built a cafe which welcomes everyone, benefits the work of YWAM and serves amazing drinks!”
Community. Quality. Coffee. You’re going to want to visit the Oval Cafe.

As we move closer to our latest opening date of 25th July, we’d like to take a look back at the past few weeks of preparation and progress!

receiving and unpacking the machines

the machines in place

staining the chairs and stools

This weekend, we are hosting over 150 young people for the football tournament!

The Oval Cafe will be opening temporarily to accommodate this group, and to begin training staff. The cafe will be open at various times between now and the grand opening, which is currently scheduled for July 1st!! This gives us time to finish updating the furniture, train staff, hang pictures on the wall, etc.

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If you are interested in serving in the cafe at any time in the future, please email Whitney at: wrandall@oval.com to arrange to join one of the staff training times. You will not be allowed to work in the cafe unless you have had the proper training.

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We are very excited at being so close to the birth of this new Oval ministry – please pray for everything to go smoothly, and if you’re around, feel free to offer your help and support to Whitney and the rest of the team!

This has been an exciting week in the Cafe as Yan has been working hard to finish the bar area!

Peter also helped install the wall cabinets

Tamara and Whitney pose behind the bar.

A view from the bar area, looking out to the rest of the room.

Some future tables, glasses, mirrors, etc.

We are also very excited about the beautiful fireplace that has been generously donated to the Cafe, check out the Fireplace Transformation blog for some photos!

The coffee machines and other important equipment are on their way from California thanks to Whitney and her connections there, some who have given us a huge discount, and others who have arranged all the shipping details. We can’t wait to get the machines and start making some quality coffee!

Covering up the “Sleeping Beauty Castle” tiles!

Gluing the granite pieces into place… realizing some of the measurements were a bit off!

Top piece of granite needed to be re-sized.

Colin is very happy to see all the granite fit into place!

Attempting to slide the fireplace into position…

More sizing adjustments!

Finally all put together!

Colin and Yan very pleased with the end result!

Testing the fire… yep, it works!

Our beautiful new, shiny fireplace!!!

It has been a pretty eventful couple of weeks in the Cafe as we have been stripping the paint off our new door, re-painting it, and building and painting the door way.

Currently, our main body of work will be preparing to do the final sanding of the floors before we varnish and seal them!

After the floors are done, we will be building the bar area from which the coffee will be served.

We will then be putting in a window seat, as well as a stage area which will double as a children’s play area. We are also in the process of getting the actual coffee machine, along with grinders and blenders, etc, shipped from California to Harpenden!

So much work has been done and so many volunteers have given their time and expertise to see the Oval Cafe come to fruition. It has been exciting to see everyone take part as some of the last major jobs are done to prepare the Cafe for business!

The cafe is making its way to the finish line, slowly but surely. Some of the final painting touches are being made almost as I type. Painting the archway, border and base-boards in a nice ‘Nutmeg’ accent colour to add a sense of warmth and style to the room. The clean white walls really help the room to feel much bigger and more open. It does seem that the more work we do, the more work we realize needs doing! We still have a ways to go before the floor is sealed and varnished and the bar area for the actual coffee machine is still in the beginning stages of production. Not to mention actually getting the coffee machine!
But we’ve been so encouraged by the amount of support and help we have had by others on the Oval. There was a good turn out of Oval staff that came in to help us paint for ‘working Wednesday’ and occasionally one or two DTS students will show up in the afternoon to give us a hand.
So although there is still much to do, things are looking positive, work is getting done and there is an end in sight!

We have had a bit of a hold up in the construction in the cafe, but yesterday our overworked - but definately not under appreciated electrictian showed up to add the sockets and a whole new electrical circuit so that we were up to code as well as had enough outlets to be useful! Before they came we had but 1 working outlet - now we have 10!

So the next challenge is to prepare the walls and ceiling for painting. So today we are washing down all the walls and taking some mouldy wallpaper out as we prepare to give the old room a face-lift!!

We will post some pictures here of the room once painted - so stay tuned for more updates!

Today after doing a little more of the sanding this morning - the professionals arrived! Noel the plumber was helping us put in the necessary pipes so that we can have water come in , and go out of the cafe (as I have heard that water is important in making coffee!).

Considering the 3 foot walks that they have had to drill through as well as taking the water from 2 different sources on 2 different floors, Noel has done a cracking job in getting the piping done!!

Now we just need to finish up the sanding (we have about a fifth of the room left), hopefully that will be done by tomorrow evening. We have also started trying different paint colours out for the walls and ceilings to see if we can make the place look good with a couple of fresh coats! I am staying out of picking the colours as I have never been accused of being good at picking colour schemes so it is definately a wise idea to leave that to people who can visualise the colours better.

Last night we put some colours on the wall, but this morning were disappointed as the colours were a lot darker then they looked on the Dulux sheets! Oh well - back to the shop for some more…

For an intro to the cafe project click here

Today began early - with a quick trip to nearby St Albans to collect the sanding equipment to remove the potentially 50 year old varnish (and carpet glue) and prepare the wood floor for the coffee shop - It has the potential for being so beautiful!

Preparing the floor took a while, as there were scores of nails and staples to take out and hammer down. Once a lot of crawling had taken place Justin started up the sander , whilst Mark and I worked on sanding the edges and getting rid of the carpet glue. It was a long a tedious job - but with the additional help of a few DTS students we definately made a good crack at the job.

We also opened the fireplace and were a little shocked at the tiling behind the boards. As Mark suggested - it looks like the tiles were taken from the castle in the Disney movie Beauty and the Beast!! I will not be upset to get rid of those!

At the end of the day we had gotten most of the glue up and half of the floor done - so tomorrow we will look at finishing the edges and also doing a final sand with fine sand paper so that we have a smooth finish!! Progress is not as fast as I thought but the room is looking good already!