Glasgow opens Scotland’s first cereal café

Black Vanilla, located on Duke Street, opened on Monday and is offering its customers over 50 British and American cereal brands to choose from.

The good news doesn’t stop there, guys – Black Vanilla’s menu also offers some amazing desserts, too. You can get waffles, crêpes, cheesecakes, over 20 different flavours of ice cream and a range of jaw-dropping milkshakes. These are no ordinary milkshakes as people are referring to them as “freakshakes”, and with names such as “Birthday Cake” and “Death by Chocolate”, deciding on which treat to choose from is going to be a tough one. Take me now, Black Vanilla.

Dayuuuum

Black Vanilla has got something to tickle everyone’s tastebuds with cereal choices ranging from Cornflakes and Shredded Wheat to Reeses Puffs, Marvel Avengers, Smorz and Hershey’s Cookies and Cream. The dessert, cereal and candy store is open from four-10pm at the moment with future opening hours expected to be noon to 10pm each day.

Black Vanilla’s Facebook Page went live on Sunday night, and already has over 3,000 likes and a five-star rating from its very happy customers.

Before we asked the owner, Audrey, a few questions she told us: “The feedback from our customers so far is overwhelming. Our Facebook has almost gone viral overnight.”

What made you want to open up a store in Glasgow? I’ve never seen anything like this here before – are you the first café to be offering such a wide range of cereal in Scotland that you are aware of?

We first thought about opening Black Vanilla after we heard about a similar concept in Manchester. We visited it and loved the idea and thought that there was a real gap in the market in Scotland for this kind of concept. After 18 months of planning, Black Vanilla was born.

As far as I know, we are the first in Scotland to offer such a large range of British and American cereals, along with the other fantastic desserts and shakes.

What will you be offering customers?

We have cereal cocktails where the customer gets to chose two brands (over 50 to chose from) which are severed in a cocktail to take away. They choose a topping from things such as Happy Hippos, White Jazzies, crushed Oreo… the list goes on. Then it’s time to pick a milk. They get this in a mini milk bottle to take away. Choices include plain milk (very rarely chosen) banana, vanilla, chocolate. For the more adventurous we have bubble gum, candy floss and caramel – to list a few. So, you can see it’s not your usual bowl of cornflakes we are offering.

Unique to Black Vanilla is our Hong Kong Waffle Wrap (below).

We also have a wall of retro sweets, our “freakshakes” and an ice cream counter.

Just wow

How did Black Vanilla’s opening day go?

We opened on Monday at 4pm. We had a queue out the door on our opening day. Word is out and with thanks to a few of the newspapers running pieces on us, we couldn’t have wished for a better start.

What is your favourite dessert/cereal from the menu?

Ooooh now you really are putting me in a position. All of our products are delicious, however if you are making me chose I personally would go for the “Birthday Cake” shake. It’s a real wow!

‘Birthday Cake Shake’

How do you feel about having breakfast for dinner?(I personally have always preferred to indulge in my cereals in the evening rather than the morning)

I was brought up having cereal in the morning and would never have it in an afternoon or an evening. However, over the years it’s become far more popular for people to snack on cereal no matter what time of the day or night. I’m sure if we asked your student readers a very high percentage will have enjoyed a bowl of cereal well past breakfast time. The American branded cereals are more like mini-desserts as well which is a huge appeal for snack lovers.

So much choice

Did you have a sweet tooth as a child?

As the opener of Scotland’s first Cereal and dessert bar I probably have the biggest sweet tooth ever.

There you have it. If I start running now from Glasgow’s West End, I should get there within an hour and burn around 400 calories. If I run back again, then I might burn a fraction off of what I’ll be devouring. But it’ll be worth it.