Love your local pub feature - Sorbo Lounge
Derbyshire Times Love your local pub feature - Sorbo Lounge, Chesterfield
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00Pubs have been a cornerstone of our local communities for centuries, offering a place
00:12for people to meet together and socialise, as well as providing thousands of jobs and
00:16a cornerstone of the local economy. Here we go behind the bar to meet the people who run
00:21our pubs and say why it's important for you to love your local.
00:24I'm at the Sorbo Lounge in Chesterfield talking to... I'm Courtney, I'm the General Manager.
00:29Yeah, and how long have you worked here? I've been here for six years, a year after
00:34that it opened I came in as the General Manager. Previously it was a post office building,
00:41it laid vacant for a while and we took it over lounges and they made it into a lovely
00:46Sorbo Lounge, which is named after the Sorbridge Roof Street next to us. That's like a nod
00:52to it. How many people do you employ? 15 to 20 people. It's quite a small workforce,
01:01quite intertwined like a little family, so it's not too crazy. Tell me a bit about what's
01:06the most popular drink and food here? So coffees is definitely what we're known for, we're
01:11seen as a cafe bar restaurant but we're definitely seen more as a cafe, so it's coffees and breakfasts,
01:16they're our most popular dishes, especially if you come in the daytime. If you come to
01:21the evening, probably something like a buttermilk chicken, more of a main meal in the evenings,
01:27but definitely in the day we're known for breakfasts and coffees, especially our lattes,
01:32but definitely our most popular drink. What beers do you serve as well? So we serve a
01:38range of beers, our most popular one is probably our Birra Moretti, although we've recently got
01:42the Cruz Campo online and people tend to like that one as well, but Birra Moretti is definitely
01:46our top seller. So what's the best thing about working at Sova then? The people that you work
01:52with and the atmosphere we're able to create, so we've managed to make our place, even though it's
01:58quite small, into a very family-orientated business. We absolutely love children and we
02:02love having families in here. There's not a lot of places to eat with families and so we try to
02:07cater for that, especially because most of the people working here are mums, so we want to create
02:12somewhere where we can bring our own children, so we're all very proud of working here and making
02:16it a very family-orientated place. So what do you offer for families? So we have free children's
02:22books, children can come in, take as many books as they like from our book corner, including adults
02:28as well, we do have adult books that they can take, but it's definitely our children's books
02:31that we're most proud about. We have a large children's area for kids to play in, there's
02:36no restrictions on where children can go in a lounge, they can go anywhere, they can play anywhere,
02:40and we've got board games available, teddy bears behind me which you can see, which children can
02:45just take and adopt all year round, as many teddies as they like, there's no purchase necessary to
02:50use any of the facilities in our lounge. We've also got free nappies, baby products in our baby
02:57change area for new mums, just in case they've forgotten something. So it's very, very family-
03:03orientated and we've got a craft table out 24-7 as well. Is there any memorable moments of working
03:08here? I mean I've been here a very long time, anything, whenever we do little things for
03:15customers, so sometimes we have customers that come in and we'll give them a free drink or a
03:19free cake and it's definitely seeing their reactions that I absolutely adore. Thankfully
03:25we're in a company that allows us to do a lot for our regular customers and that's my favourite
03:30moment, every time that happens. Have you got any future plans? At the moment we're raising money
03:37for Baby Basics, so we've got a lot of raffles, a lot of giveaways, but then we'll start raising
03:43money for my local farm that I live near because I live in Stonebroom, so I'll be focused on raising
03:48money and funds for building a community centre hopefully for the people in our local area,
03:54so that's the next big plan. It's a great place to work and I really hope more people find us as
04:00well because although we're on the high street, lots of people miss us so I hope they find us.
04:05Come on, pop in and have a coffee.