Warning: featured image is a gross over dramatisation

Ely is a booming foodie hub. Over the last few years, we have seen a brilliant explosion of independent talent across the city, with a wide variety of fantastic restaurants showing exactly what our independent food scene can do. It is vibrant, it is exciting, and it is exactly what a historic city like ours deserves.

So why on earth can’t we do the same with coffee?

It has just been announced that Ely is getting another Costa Coffee. Yes, you read that right. Another one. This will be our fourth Costa in a city of just 21,000 people. We already have them at the Leisure Centre, in the heart of Town, and inside Tesco. Now, Sainsbury’s is getting one too. Four corporate carbon-copy coffee shops for a population this size is, frankly, completely ridiculous. Especially when you consider that we have other chains too, from Starbucks, Esquires, and Café Nero.

Instead of rolling out the red carpet for corporate giants to clone themselves across every corner of the city, we should be doing far more to promote and support our small independents. Complacency is a dangerous thing. If we just sit back and let this happen, we risk falling into the exact same trap as so many other towns across the country – where dozens of identical barber shops and charity shops run rampant, slowly erasing any unique character.

Nobody wants to see our beautiful, historic city turned into just another generic, copy-and-paste British high street.

Opening Hours vs. Work-Life Balance

My sister is a massive coffee shop fan and she raised a really fair point the other day. She argued that a lot of small independents struggle to stay competitive simply because they are “never open”.

It is a tricky one. On one hand, I have an enormous amount of respect for independent owners who choose to put their own – and their staff’s – work-life balance first. Running a small food or drink business is exhausting, and protecting your health and family time is important. But on the other hand, this completely flies in the face of that classic rule of business: the customer is always right. By not opening during hours that actually fit around when customers need them, these shops are putting themselves at a massive disadvantage. If a commuter can’t get a coffee at 7:00 AM on their way to work, or someone fancying a brew at 4:30 PM finds the door locked, they are going to walk straight into the welcoming, corporate arms of a chain that is open twelve hours a day.

A Hostile Environment for Small Business

But let’s be honest, opening hours are only a fraction of the problem. The real issue is that the government’s increasingly hostile attitude towards business is actively rigged against the little guy.

Between the absolute mismanagement of our energy policy – leaving us with some of the highest utility prices in the developed world – and yet another punishing increase in National Insurance, small businesses are being squeezed from every angle. Add sky-high Business Rates into the mix, and it becomes a total uphill battle.

Huge corporate chains can easily absorb these spiralling costs across hundreds of sites. A tiny independent coffee shop run by a local family simply cannot. By making the economic environment so incredibly hostile, the system gives these massive chains a huge, unfair advantage over the small coffee shops that give our high streets their soul.

The Regional Rise of the Clone Town

We are not just imagining this trend, either. The wider Cambridgeshire area has a massive, documented history with this exact issue. In fact, a major high street study famously crowned nearby Cambridge as the UK’s ultimate “Clone Town” because its historic streets had been so thoroughly overrun by global brands, completely erasing its independent retail identity.

We are seeing the exact same frustrations boiling over in neighbouring market towns like St Ives, where locals are actively watching independent cafés vanish while massive corporate chains sit directly opposite each other on the high street.

When small, unique independents are forced out by spiralling costs, landlords inevitably fill the empty units with charity shops and corporate chains because those business models are the only ones deep-pocketed enough to survive the overheads. It creates a dull, predictable high street. Visitors step out of our magnificent Cathedral, look down the High Street and instead of discovering a unique market town bursting with local character, they are greeted by the exact same three things they have back home.

By allowing the old Sainsbury’s café space on Lisle Lane to become our fourth Costa, we are actively trading away our local utility for generic convenience. We are firmly on track to inherit that bland homogeneity if we do not put our foot down.

What is at Stake?

This isn’t just about where you grab your morning flat white, either; it is a genuine threat to our local economy. Ely relies heavily on its scenic, historic beauty to drive tourism. Visitors don’t come from all over the world to see the exact same corporate chains they have outside their own front door. They come for the heritage, the charm, and the independent spirit. If we dilute that, we hurt tourism, and we hurt the very soul of the city.

It is time to wake up and back our independent baristas before the high street becomes entirely corporate. Thankfully, we aren’t completely devoid of soul just yet. We are incredibly lucky to still have phenomenal local joints like Silver Oak Coffee serving up proper brews at The Yard, independent gems like Grain Culture and Prosper Café. These are the places making Ely unique, and they are exactly where we should be spending our hard-earned cash instead of feeding the corporate machine.

What do you think? Do our independents need to adapt their hours to survive, or is the government making it a losing game regardless? Let me know in the comments!