Gareth Kerr, owner of Cafe Kick, has made some changes

A POPULAR cafe known for its table football said business has boomed since it was forced to take them out during Covid.

Cafe Kick in Exmouth Market was renowned for its French-style football tables with heavy aluminium figures, rubbery playfield, light cork balls and a compact design.

But owner Gareth Kerr said the games were creating too much of a “masculine crowd”.

He told the Tribune: “That’s when we had the epiphany of ‘wow this is so much better’, so we brought one back. Even with the one, we cover it and people sit around it.

“Too many people and it becomes a bit groupy. It brings a certain crowd and becomes quite masculine. We still get a lot of people saying they can’t believe we’ve changed it and I say the style it was just doesn’t pay the bills, everything is so expensive.

“To make a little place like this work you need to get bums in seats.”

Mr Kerr said that through the 2000s Cafe Kick was a bar in every sense of the word.

There were no table service or reservations, and crowds with bottles of beers would gather around the football tables.

But over the years the food operation has increased and table service replaced the chaos of the crowded bar.

All these changes directed the business back to a European style cafe.

Mr Kerr said: “The risk with table service was that people wouldn’t interact, but that wasn’t the case.

“The table football helps out because that’s where interaction happens and the tables being in such close proximity.”

Mr Kerr said the changes at Cafe Kick had mirrored ones at Exmouth Market itself.

“Before ’97, Exmouth Market was a very different place,” he said.

“It was a bit more like Chapel Market.

“There was a Wimpy burger bar, two betting shops in one little street. It was dodgy, a proper spit and sawdust kind of street.

“A lot of the properties were derelict, they were not in good condition.”