City cafe to be ‘land wanted’ as owner confirms plans to close

A much-loved cafe in a Leicestershire town is to close later this summer. The New World Café in Melton Road, Syston, will close after its lease ends.

Business owner Paul Whayman, 67, said the situation “gave me the impetus to realize I was done” and he would now retire. Paul said he will miss his staff and regular customers “horribly”.

Paul, who has lived in Sileby most of his life, has run the business for the past 20 years. He said: “The lease will end at the end of August.

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“The owner decided to sell the land and so they no longer give leases. I don’t think it’s unusual, business ends.

“If I had been offered another lease I wouldn’t have done it as I’m of retirement age. It kind of gave me the push to realize that I was done.

“For most of these 20 years I’ve been doing this six days a week.” Paul said the past two years had been some of the “toughest” for the business.

Formerly called the Continental Café, it was renamed when it reopened after the Covid-19 pandemic. Paul said: “The cost increases have been really hard to deal with, the electricity and food bills have been horrendous.

“Staff need extra pay because their costs have gone up and trying to keep our food prices at a level where people will come and buy is really difficult. A year before, we were closed for a large part.”

Looking back on his time as owner, I asked Paul what the cafe offers to the people of Syston. “I think it was the kind of place that a suburb like Syston needs,” he said.

“A place to come and feel comfortable, decent value, and a lot of people relied on it to have a conversation once a day. Our staff has always been good at this sort of thing, with a lot of banter.

“(I am) very sad to realize that I will not see many of my regular customers and my staff. We’ve got a fantastic team and we’re all going to miss each other, I’m going to miss them.”

Paul said the closing date for the business has yet to be confirmed. Reacting to the news on a ‘Syston Spotted’ Facebook group, visitors said the cafe would be “missed”.

One user said: “Such sad news. Paul and his staff are amazing and the all day breakfast is the best.

“He will be sorely missed.” Another said: “Oh no that’s terrible… our favorite coffee shop.”

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