Open a Café in Your Home Courtyard!

Can you conjure up a summer idyll, with dill taking pride of place? Or perhaps your signature creation is a bubert as light as bubbles? Do your cakes help people escape from everyday life and put them in the mood for celebration? Does your cream soup burst with the flavour and goodness of the garden?

Can you imagine your culinary creations being on a café menu? You will have the opportunity to experience this on 7 and 8 August! On those days, cafés will open in the courtyards of homes in various locations across the emerging Valmiera Municipality. Perhaps in yours, too? This experience may inspire you to turn your passion for cooking or hosting guests into your main occupation in the future. Become a chef and take part in Home Café Days! Existing food service providers (cafés, restaurants, etc.) are also invited to participate in the event. Apply by 20 May by completing the application form here: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/17F2o-BO_YVi3fJzKzMfsMRIVuBkg9CkaVHg9AfSWAxU/viewform?ts=607d781a&gxids=7628&edit_requested=true

Home Café Days is an initiative in which anyone interested—an entrepreneur or a private individual—is invited to become a chef by opening a café in the courtyard of their home for visitors, serving homemade food, sharing its unique story, and complementing the offering with various activities, such as games, concerts, skills workshops, farm visits, and the opportunity to purchase handmade souvenirs, and so on. Participants are also responsible for arranging their home cafés, using the resources already available. We invite Home Café Days participants to consider how toilet facilities and hand-washing opportunities will be provided for guests, how the courtyard will be arranged, where the menu with prices will be displayed, and so on. Each home café will be able to set the planned charge for the meal served, intended to cover the costs of purchasing and preparing the products.

The aim of Home Café Days is to promote cooperation between communities and highlight the distinctive stories characteristic of the municipality through gastronomic tourism. Home Café Days will be held in Latvia for the third year, inspired by Estonia, where this is a popular, widely attended and eagerly awaited event that not only invites people to discover a range of flavours but also introduces them to special cultural events and tourism offerings.

In the emerging Valmiera Municipality, the initiative is coordinated by the Valmiera Tourism Information Centre (TIC), which assists interested participants both in promoting their offerings and in organising home cafés, including by inviting them to take part in practical training. During the project, participants will receive special support from the Food and Veterinary Service and the State Revenue Service in the form of various concessions during the event, as well as coordinated marketing to promote the offerings. More information about participating in Home Café Days in Valmiera Municipality will be provided after 20 May to those participants who have completed the application form, when the Valmiera TIC contacts each of them individually.

The aim of Home Café Days is to promote regional tourism destinations. The initiative is organised by the Investment and Development Agency of Latvia in cooperation with the Latvian Rural Tourism Association “Baltic Country Holidays”.

Author:

valmiera.lv