Cadwaladers comes to town!

Eastgate has now entered its second year and continues to draw widely recognised brands to Llanelli for the first time. On October 30th, a planning application for Unit 8 was filed by Cadwaladers, a prestigious name in the restaurant sector, whose specialized ice cream café will become the third Welsh retailer to open shop at Eastgate.

Cadwaladers was established in 1927 (just six years after the Jenkins family went into business) as a convenience store in Gwynedd and began to specialize in ice cream from 1945 onwards. The original outlet in Criccieth evolved into an ice cream shop and later grew into the modern café-ice cream parlour hybrid. Through the 1980s and up to the present day, a further three Cadwaladers cafés have opened in the Gwynedd county (Porthmadog, Portmeirion, Pwllheli), two in Conwy (Betws-y-Coed, Llandudno), three in Cardiff (one in St David's 2 and two outlets at Cardiff Bay), one in Barry, and two shops over the border at the Trafford Centre in Manchester and Trentham Gardens, Staffordshire.

The opening of a branch in Carmarthenshire will entrench the Cadwaladers name among major Welsh brands and add momentum to the wider expansion of the company as it aims to open up to 5 new stores annually until 2016.

Interestingly, recent expansion efforts have been something of a marketing experiment where the focus was on variety, broadening the customer base, and adapting to local needs. The arrival of Cadwaladers Ice Cream Cafe in South Wales coincided with the creation of two "sub brands".

'The Yuddle Bar at Cadwaladers' first appeared at the site of the existing ice cream cafe in Cardiff's St Davids 2 shopping centre on 2nd June 2012. This was joined by a smaller Yuddle stall in the same shopping centre, and on July 3rd another Yuddle Bar opened at the Trafford Centre in Manchester. Creativity and customer choice was the central concept of The Yuddle Bar at Cadwaladers, where ice cream flavours and toppings could be combined in any way possible. Much like an ordinary ice cream parlour but with extra floor decorations.

Before

Post-Yuddle upgrade

A second sub brand, 'The Coffee House at Cadwaladers' opened on 15th August 2012 in the Red Dragon Centre, Cardiff Bay. This variation of the ice cream café distanced itself from the playful simplicity of Yuddle Bar, adopting instead a "modern urban chic" look with "vintage grandeur" and shifting the emphasis from ice cream to coffee, cakes and snacks. In other words, the family business came of age and conformed with the restaurant trends of the day. And by dispensing with the authentic heritage of the Cadwaladers family (who, incidentally, have not possessed ownership of the business since 1983), The Coffee House was able to seduce consumers with that same artificial vintage décor found in major coffee shop chains.

Phase 3: The Coffee House at Cadwaladers

Following the success of the Cardiff Bay experiment, The Coffee House at Cadwaladers (CHAC) supplanted the Yuddle Bar in St Davids 2 and, bearing little resemblance to the original ice cream shops, the rebranded Cadwaladers returned to North Wales in December 2012 with a CHAC redesign to the Porthmadog shop. This year, a new CHAC was opened in Barry on 18th March, while the Pwllheli café received a CHAC upgrade in June.

It has not yet been announced which kind of Cadwaladers café will fill the newly leased unit at Eastgate, although blueprints in the planning applications clearly depict a shopfront with the CHAC name that also features the traditional Ice Cream Shop signage and colour schemes. From this information, I have created this 3D mock up of the new shop:

 

 

Cardiff-based architects HLN have been hired for the Eastgate Cadwaladers. Interestingly, in their November 6th announcement via Twitter, they describe the project as 'the first of the new concept @CoffeeHousesuk', making specific mention of CHAC.

Despite their success, the CHAC developments are intended to complement rather than replace the Ice Cream Cafés, and the inconsistencies in Cadwaladers branding looks set to continue. As of November 2013, the company's main website has fallen victim to the ongoing identity switching/splitting, with a new site at cadwaladers.com under development. A dual operation of the main company and its sub-brand can be observed on Twitter, where @CoffeeHousesuk reminds followers that: "We are rebranding! Please follow @cadwaladers for exciting updates about our stores!". Similarly, on Instagram the company has two official pages: statigr.am/cadwaladers & statigr.am/thecoffeehouseuk.

Could the rebranding eventually do away with duplication and return to the original name? If the new website address and main Twitter account are anything to go by, then it is also significant that the Facebook page contains no mention of the CHAC brand.

Two interrelated factors seem to drive this whole 'identity crisis'. First, the Cadwaladers name is primarily associated with ice cream. Second, people don't want ice cream all year round. Just as the CHAC formula highlights the sale of cakes and hot drinks, the Eastgate Cadwaladers may need to do this under the 'Ice Cream Café' banner. A smart move, then, to open shop during the winter and build a reputation for serving soups and hot drinks.

Whatever the outcome of the rebranding, Cadwaladers is coming to Carmarthenshire for the long haul. With its production facilities now being relocated from Llanystumdwy to a larger site in South Wales, the company will also create jobs in the region. At Eastgate, recruitment for store supervisors and baristas has already begun.


Enjoy your affogato.

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