Name: Amanda and Jonathan Roberts

Business name: Milano’s Cafe, Old Chapel Court, Oswestry

Opening hours: Tuesday-Saturday 9.30am-4pm

When did you open your business and why?

The business started in 2002 and was first an Italian-themed coffee shop, but over the passage from us. In 2004 they moved over, developed it and we bought it in December, 2016.

I was the manager here so the family association started in 2004.

We knew it was a good business and we all worked here. We wanted a place of our own and I popped the question to the owner. I was upfront about owning a place of my own and he turned around and offered me this one.

It took around 12 months to get through.

Why in this location?

Being in the alley helps – it looks nice, it’s inviting, and the landlord really looks after it. Customers say it’s like a little Chester, it’s out of the way but busy so it’s the best of both worlds.

It allows us to have regular customers coming here, whether it’s one, two or five times a week.

We’ve got a great base and there’s two couples who met here and have been friends ever since.

Tell us about your business?

Obviously we do coffee but it’s much more than that.

We’re very selective about where we get our coffee from, and we’ve just gone onto a different supplier.

We found that peoples’ tastes have changed.

We had people coming in asking if the coffee had changed, but we made a blend about 14 years ago that’s named after us.

We went to a roaster and told them what we want, but tastes have changed and we’ve made it a bit lighter.

And we do food – Covid-19 has seen what we offer be limited somewhat.

Our mantra is always that we source locally and everything we serve is homemade from locally-sourced ingredients.

That includes Welsh products too.

We had an extensive menu, pre-Covid but it’s been picking up and the Eat Out to Help Out really helped.

What is your proudest moment?

Our proudest moment here is when we actually took this over. We worked here for well over a decade before we took over, so we did a lot of work trying to maintain it before we took over.

We developed the business, looked after it and did all that hard work even though we were only employees.

We worked as though the business was ours and people thought it was, and we’ve got such lovely customers.

That is proudest aspect of being here – we don’t have a single proud moment but the fact our customers keep coming back is great.

Even in these strange times too.

Any strange requests?

We get quite a few strange requests but nothing to shout about.

We get people who want things adding to and taking away from their meals. We’re quite open to changing our paninis and fill them to order.