Feed Me! Fully Loaded is a new colourful café gem tucked away on Lilac Crescent in Beeston Rylands.
The new café takes inspiration from Little Shop of Horrors, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Dr Seuss. It will be serving breakfast, hot dogs and desserts including a bounteous sweet treat called ‘The Ralph’.
The dessert is loaded with mud pie, cookies, ice cream, whipped cream, sauces, nuts and more, the decadent pudding for four is dedicated to Ralph Hoare.
The 110-year-old was the third oldest man in the country at the time of his passing in January of last year. His Granddaughter Joanna Benfield used some of her inheritance money to open the vegan junk food café with her husband Lee.
When he was asked the secret of long life, the RAF veteran would reply “golf, gardening and sugar.”
Joanna said: “It’s amazing, how many people are in the UK and he was the third oldest man. We wouldn’t have been able to do this without him. When people would ask ‘how have you lived this long?’ one of his things was “plenty of sugar” so we decided we wanted to make this huge sharing dessert and name it after him.”
Breakfasts – served at weekends – are themed around Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Dr Seuss and Tots TV characters.
Augustus Gloop is a stack of chocolate chip pancakes, Green Eggs and Ham is a bagel topped with No Homer’s smoked ham and tofu scrambled egg, and Tilly, Tom and Tiny are fried tater tots loaded with vegan toppings.
Joanna, 33, said: “We wanted to make the food vegan, but we didn’t want the selling point to be that it’s vegan. We wanted to do vegan food that has this element of fun to it.”
A children’s menu will be served too and instead of a plastic toy, youngsters will receive an eco-pencil. “You use it like a normal pencil but when it gets near the end you plant the tip and it will grow specific types of herbs or vegetables,” said Lee.
“We’ve done vegan for the food and the taste but there’s the ethical side of it so we’ve tried to go as far as we can with it, the straws being a prime example.”
The cafe will be dog-friendly and has 12 seats, but more may be added in future by removing part of the counter.
Opening hours will be Wednesday to Friday 11am to 6pm, Saturday 9am to 6pm, and Sunday 9am to 5pm.
