Tiptree jam firm to close tea room

Tiptree jam maker Wilkin & Sons says it is "saddened" to have to close one of its tea rooms later this summer.

The Lordship Tea Room in Writtle - which employs up to 20 staff - will not have its lease renewed in September.

Owner Wilkin & Sons, which made a loss of £1.8m last year, said the Writtle tea room was not performing as well as its others.

Scott Goodfellow, joint-managing director of Wilkin & Sons, said it was a "tough decision".

The firm is best known for its jams and marmalades in small glass jars, found in dozens of countries across the world, but it also owns 10 tea rooms - nine in Essex and one in Suffolk.

The Lordship tea room has been open since 2011 but bosses said in the past couple of years it had been "really difficult to make any money" at the site.

"Some tea rooms do particularly well, others not quite as well," Mr Goodfellow told the BBC.

In the company’s end-of-year statement for 2023, its board of directors said that although its tea rooms had done "an extraordinary job" recovering after the pandemic, it expected "to see some rationalisation of this estate as we gradually filter out the weaker-performing sites".

Mr Goodfellow told the BBC he hoped the firm's nine other tea rooms would still be open in three years' time "but they have to be commercially viable".

He added the firm had experienced “a perfect storm” of high prices for energy and materials, as well as the cost-of-living crisis affecting its customers.

News of the impending closure has come as a shock to regular customers at The Lordship tea rooms.

Bev Johnson, from Writtle, said the decision was "disgusting".

"It’s always full-up, you have to book a table a week in advance - it doesn’t make sense," she told the BBC.

Ms Johnson's friend Liz Royle, from Chignall Row, said it would be "a sad day" when the tea room closed.

"It’s friendly, the food is good, the girls are lovely who work here."

Ann Weymouth and Jan Mason, both from Writtle, said they were "devastated" by the news, adding they were going to miss the tea rooms "very, very much".

Mr Goodfellow said the seven full-time and 13 part-time staff had taken news of the closure “very well”, and he was hopeful staff could be re-deployed elsewhere in the business before any redundancy options were considered.

The Lordship will close to the public on 30 August.

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