The Doghouse Coffee Hut is latest venture to open at Lodge Farm, Deenethorpe near Corby

The Doghouse Coffee Hut is the latest venture to open at Lodge Farm, Deenethorpe near Corby.

India Streather, 21, is behind the new venture whichi will complement the dog-related businesses that already run at Lodge Farm.

The DogHouse Coffee Hut will sell coffee, cold drinks, bacon butties and a variety of cakes to customers who use the facilities at Lodge Farm.

Her sister Savannah, 23, already has Savs Bark park and Luxury Boarding on-site.

The Streathers are a family who have lived at Lodge Farm for three generations. It was a working farm until a few years ago.

In 1990, many farmers needed to diversify to supplement income so Julia Streather opened a boarding kennels for dogs.

This was very popular in the local area and she soon had a fabulous reputation and grew in size quite rapidly.

In 2003, she retired and the business was passed into the capable hands of her son James and his wife, Helen.

They ran this, thankfully with some experienced, valuable members of staff, as they also had two young daughters, Savannah and India, as well as running the farm, an egg business, and Helen was a nurse in intensive care at KGH.

Eventually Helen had to leave nursing and the family opened a cattery, a farm shop and dog walking paddocks.

Over time the shop closed, but they started grooming on-site which is now run independently.

When the children were old enough, they played a very active role in both the kennels and cattery, so eventually these were passed down into their hands to run solely.

Unfortunately, this was just prior to Covid and the cattery closed very quickly and the kennels also ended up closing.

But thankfully the paddocks were still in use and remain busy still.

During Covid, both daughters found jobs elsewhere.

Towards the end of the pandemic they chose new ventures, but were never really happy so Savannah wanted to try something new.

She opened up a play park purely for dogs. This was a play area with a swimming pool, sand pit, slides, ball pool, toys and large running areas.

At weekends, she then held breed/age related sessions for dogs to play together.

Due to the success of this, clients were asking about boarding facilities so she chose to leave her full-time job and re-open just five luxury boarding kennels - clients now book well in advance to ensure they can get booked in.

With the paddocks and play park busy at weekends, and there are dog training, dog agility, dog grooming on-site, there became a need for refreshments.

So while India enjoys her full-time job at Joules, she gets bored at weekends so has decided to open The Doghouse Coffee Hut.

Her first trading day was April 29, serving a variety of hot and cold drinks, bacon butties and cakes.

It will be trial and error getting started, but she thrives on the challenge.

The first weekend went well and she already has a five-star rating on her Facebook page (https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100091460529255)

Cappuccinos for owners and puppuccinos for dogs along with bacon butties proved to be the most popular.

She had amazing feedback on the quality of the freshly made cakes too.

This weekend coming she will have coronation cookies.

If anyone wants more information on the kennels or play park for dogs, they can contact Savannah, https://www.facebook.com/savsbarkpark or send an email to [email protected] and anybody wishing to book a dog paddock can find the information at https://lodgefarmcentre.co.uk/booking-information/