New not-for-profit café opens in Carlisle city centre

Lost on a Mountain is now trading on Bank Street as a not-for-profit operation, with any money the shop makes either being reinvested in the business or given to charity.

Manager Jim Smith is confident that it can build a following, despite the competition from established outlets.

He said: “We are aiming to be a community-based café, not-for-profit and what we want is to be an area where anyone can come, relax and have a good coffee.”

Lost on a Mountain occupies in the former premises of The Olive Tree Cafe and has two full-time staff – Mr Smith and a chef – as well as three part-time workers in front-of house roles.

He said: “We do not want to be a place where people just buy a coffee and then nobody speaks to you. That is one of the reasons why we have gone non-profit. We do not want to be a chain, we want to be as individual as we can be.”

Carlisle has a burgeoning coffee culture with several independent venues having opened in the last 10 years.

They include Foxes in Abbey Street and Coffee Genius in St Cuthbert’s Lane, alongside the long-established John Watt.

The city centre also features the national operators Caffe Nero, Starbucks and Costa, the last of which announced earlier this year that it is looking for a third outlet in Carlisle.

Mr Smith joked: “If there was a tea culture, we would be a tea shop.”

He added: “We are not here to compete with John Watt [also in Bank Street]. They do what they do very well and we are not a John Watt-style place, we are hoping to be for people in their 20s and 30s who are maybe more used to this style.”

The cause that the café is currently supporting is a school for deaf children in Kenya, which was built by people from the UK. “We believe that we should be there for other people,” Mr Smith said.

He added that the café made an effort to source as much of its produce locally as possible, including its coffee, which is from Red Bank Coffee Roasters, based in Coniston.