In an age of global coffee shop chains and restaurant empires, Bettys Café Tea Rooms remain firmly independent and local to Yorkshire. On the 90th anniversary of its first tea room, in Harrogate, Helen Pickles meets the creative force behind this truly “handcrafted” business
Marian is putting the faces on the Fat Rascal scones—two cherries for eyes, three almonds for a smile. Bill is piping hazelnut and almond meringue bases for the Swiss Engadine tortes—perfect, freehand circles. Josie is deftly turning a stream of molten chocolate into cigar-shaped chocolate flakes.
It is 10am in Bettys’ craft bakery in Harrogate, and the working day is half-over. Business in Yorkshire’s—possibly Britain’s—most famous café tea rooms starts at 1am, when the bread team arrives at the bakery. It continues with the arrival of the pastry team at 2am and confectioners at 3.30am. By 7.15am, delivery vans have left for the six Bettys tea rooms and shops.
Up to 175 different items, from sourdough bread to curd tarts, seasonal quiches to champagne truffles, are turned out weekly (the bakery closes only on Christmas Day) in a true “handicraft” operation. As Marian says: “Set the cherries too far apart and, by the time the Rascal (a type of scone) is baked, they look like headlights.”
Frederick Belmont might not recognise a Fat Rascal, but he would recognise the perfectionism behind it. A Swiss-born baker and confectioner, Frederick arrived in England in 1907 and opened the first Bettys Café Tea Room in Harrogate in 1919. It married the finest Swiss confectionery craft with the finest Yorkshire produce, setting standards that attracted royalty and the higher classes. Ninety years on, the business is still family-owned and run; chairman Jonathan Wild is Frederick’s great-nephew.
In an age of multinational empires, Bettys has bucked the trend and stayed close to its Yorkshire roots—and prospered. Queues (albeit fast-moving) are a feature of its tea rooms; since opening in 2001, its cookery school now offers 20 courses a month; and staff retention is high (inter-marriage and 25-plus years’ service are not uncommon).
But in the 1960s and 1970s, things were not so rosy. Post-war rationing and death duties—from the loss of Frederick, at 67—meant Bettys was losing its way. When Jonathan and his wife, Lesley, joined in the 1970s, they brought fresh energy and a determination, Lesley says, to get back to Bettys’ roots, “providing fresh food using quality ingredients served in beautiful surroundings."
There was one small problem: at the time, Lesley was in her mid-20s and set on a career in the law. But a simple love of good food—and, crucially, good ingredients—was inbred. Brought up in Pocklington, at the foot of the Yorkshire Wolds, with a trained cook for a mother and a father who owned a farm, Lesley helped in the family kitchen, particularly on Tuesdays, which was baking day.
Lesley’s creativity—she is a skilled artist and dancer as well as a cook—won the day, and she was sucked into the Bettys business. From her first major job there—working on a range of fruit cakes for the export market—she has worked behind the scenes, refurbishing the tea rooms, setting up the state-of-the-art cookery school, writing Bettys’ first cookery book and overseeing menus and products.
But how do you recapture the quality and elegance that distinguished Frederick Belmont’s first tea rooms, yet still appeal to contemporary diners? “It’s an interesting question,” Lesley muses. “If you ask the customers, they’ll say, ‘it’s always been like this’. But we are always changing. However, the fundamental principles remain the same: skill, freshness, quality ingredients. The most important thing is that the food tastes delicious. We’re not fashionable; we’re comfortable, comforting and a treat.” Indeed, it’s true. At the Harrogate tea room my waitress quietly mothered me with newspapers, mulled wine and the signature Yorkshire rarebit dish.
There are also fish and chips and Swiss chocolate torte on the menu, and fondant fancies and vanilla slices in the shops, just as in Frederick’s day. But Lesley has updated things with, for example, smoked salmon pasta, rösti potatoes, apple cake and walnut tart. You won’t find double-chocolate-chip muffins though. “We’re a craft bakery,” Lesley says. “We’ll make a French apple tart, with fresh apples, which has added value that people can taste. What’s the point in making muffins or apple pies when people can buy an acceptable version at half the price in the supermarket?”
Lesley is always looking at the competition. “I’ll lift cups to see the make of china.” She and Jonathan have a pact not to discuss business outside work, but this is tricky when they go for Saturday breakfast at the Harlow Carr Gardens branch of Bettys. “However perfect it is, there’s always something not perfect that I’ll notice,” Lesley says. “It’s our fault for being fussy. When it’s a family business, you feel personally responsible for customers’ experience. But that sets the standards.”
* Branches of Bettys Café Tea Rooms can be found in Northallerton, Ilkley, Harrogate, RHS Harlow Carr Gardens and two in York. For details, see bettys.co.uk