Tuesday 1 December 2015

Making in London: the Old Kent Road and Ice Cream, by Mark Brearley

On 1st August this year my colleague Mark Brearley went for a walk around the Old Kent Road with his daughter. 

They spoke to Ossie the ice-cream guy in 8 Sandgate Street, the place they had looked at a few months earlier and considered buying as a new home for Kaymet (their tray factory), off the Old Kent Road. Ossie's family have 55 ice cream vans based in Bermondsey, Peckham (Mani’s by the car wash place http://www.manicaterers.co.uk) and Camberwell. On Sandgate Street he has raised the roof and fixed the building up well, with a high mezzanine and so on. He does vans for Glastonbury and other events, and liveried up ones for the London Eye and several such places. They have 30-something Kelly's of Cornwall branded vans - like a franchise. He said they need to be around there because most of their business is in Central London. He said the Southwark planners told him that the area would all become housing in future, and he worries that his and all the businesses will all be pushed out to Kent.

There are also lots of caterers / food preparers in the area of the Old Kent Road, which is currently being primed for 'regeneration', for example there is one behind the Kaymet factory, in the Glengall Business Centre (http://www.berkeleycatering.co.uk/index.php). 

Here’s an extract from Mark's list of London manufacturers, covering the Old Kent Road, plus some:

Sadly the old Kaymet Sylvan Grove factory was demolished last week. To make way for, you guessed it, a block of flats! 
Piece by piece our city sub-urbanises. We all need to shout out  stop!
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