In 2005 a vision of what the derelict Station Masters House at Barnstaple Railway Station could look like, with a little well significant bit of TLC!

We placed a second hand burger van on the platform so that we could gauge the publics reaction to being able to get refreshments at the station for the first time in literally decades, it also allowed the public to change their travel patterns just slightly to allow an extra few minutes to enable them to purchase food and drink. This was a key stage for us as the refurbishment cost was high and we needed people as soon as we were open to already be used to being able to purchase food and drink at the station.

The initial plan was for the burger van to be in place for around 6 months to allow the paper work to be completed for the project, 30 months later the building works commenced and finally on August 12^th 2008 We opened for the very first time at around 10am. This proved to be a very busy time for us, as the Beijing Olympics proved a popular draw whilst waiting for the train!

We have always tried to be as environmentally friendly as we can, indeed we are based in a UNesco Biosphere one of only a few in the world, great effort and expense was under taken during the refurbishment to allow us to run as environmentally friendly as we could.

Our aim is to source good local produce were ever possible, this includes our eggs, bacon, sausages, milk, pasties, water, cider, ales, chutneys amongst others. We also bake virtually all of our cakes and tray bakes on site (the exclusion becoming some vegan items), this helps support our local community and minimise our environmental impact.

We pride ourselves in providing much more than a typical railway station café, in terms of quality of product and additional free services such as train information and high speed wifi.

Our café is a multi award winning family run business, which is keen to serve our customers to the best of our ability, particularly in these currently extremely challenging times.

We hope you will visit  us very soon.

From the

Station masters team