Photos/Video: Cafe Opens At Botanical Gardens

December 12, 2015

Edible Creations and the Garden Café, located in the Visitor’s Centre at the Botanical Gardens, celebrated their grand opening on Friday [Dec 11].

Partners Feronika Suhartono and Jahmar Woods were joined by Acting Director of Parks Craig Burt along with Harrison and Rene Rose Isaac who own and manage 3R’s Bermuda Hibiscus Gifts and Boutique which is also located in the Visitor’s Centre.

“Under two hats we have Edible Creations and the Garden Café which is located in the Botanical Gardens Visitor Center”, the business owners said. “The Edible Creations started about six years ago. We’ve been on a long journey and finally arrived at the location here.

“We have the arrangements, the fruit arrangements that are similar to overseas. They are fruits carved into the shapes of bouquets of flowers. We also extended our product line offering watermelons carvings and as well as fruit kabobs.

“All of the arrangements or the fruit carvings are made to order. You just give us a call and say this is what we’re looking for. Then we tailor each arrangement or carving to whatever you’re looking for.

“We also have the Garden Café which is an open salad bar. You get to make your own salad, sub or wrap. We’re open nine to five, Monday through Friday, and Saturdays we’re open ten to two. We’re going to expand to Sunday as to do the Sunday brunch, codfish breakfast, but just not as yet. In the new year we’ll be doing it.

“The menu is similar to the Subway style menu. We have the six inch roll and you can put any topping you want. Even our breakfast, we have waffles, whipped cream with the fruit. The fruit is our main thing that we deal with but we just switch it up a little bit, make it more versatile, a little fun.

“It’s the breakfast all day and then it’s an open salad sandwich bar that you choose your toppings to customize to your liking.

The business had a soft opening about three months ago and the owners said, “It’s pretty good. We’ve got the walk in traffic, a lot of the parks’ workers. A lot of hospital staff have been coming over, a few doctors from Point Finger Road. Yeah, we’ve got a few students and mommies that come with their kids and stuff. It’s going pretty good.

“The Kiddy Corner came from a lot of nannies and moms coming here and it’s in an environment good for kids. A lot of them gave me the idea so I just took the ideas and ran with it.

“We just want to say thank you because the actual Kiddy Corner was our concept and it was actually developed by the Mocha Minds Book Club. We do want to say thank you, much appreciation for actually putting and executing our idea. Then we also did get a donation today as well from the Delta Sigma Theta Sorority. They donated some books today for the Kids Corner so thank you to them as well.

Acting Director of Parks Craig Burt said, “We are thankful that we have these two businesses that have decided to use Botanical Gardens as their avenue where they can actually be a part of this small business operation.

“Some will know and others may not know, the visitors center here has had several different changes over the last few years. It’s been a restaurant. We’ve had it as a visitors center.

“It has been rented out for various functions but we were trying to look for a positive and economic way where we could have a small business operating, but at the same time have a venue where people would actually come and see what’s in the gardens as well.

“We know that it’s been a long challenge for the two businesses here. We’ve had some structure issues with the building but most of it has been rectified.

“They’re up and running and what we’re hoping that we see over the next few years, with the contracts that we do have in place, that it will be two viable operations that would add a positive aspect to the use of Botanical Gardens.

“On behalf of the Minister of Public Works and the Department of Parks, I’d like to thank the businesses operators here who have taken the opportunity to start a business here and help with say promoting the gardens in and around Bermuda, but also internationally with their products.

“So on behalf of the Ministry, thank you very much for being a partner in Botanical Gardens. We wish you all the success for your business enterprises here.”

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