The discreet little cafe that was a rendez-vous for the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge on their first dates is up for sale at £115,000, it was revealed today.
The North Point cafe became a popular spot for Prince William and Kate Middleton to relax between lectures at the town’s university at the start of their relationship.
Business has boomed at the coffee shop in St Andrews, Scotland, since the royal wedding in 2011 with tourists travelling from all over the world to have their photo taken at the spot.
Linda Cunningham, 54, who runs the cafe with husband John, also 54, said: “We bought North Point 12 years ago, which was the time that William first started university at St Andrews and he became quite a regular customer with his friends.
“Kate also was a customer with her friends and some rumours started circling around the town that maybe there was something going on between the two of them.
“Then they started coming in for coffee together a few times.
“They didn’t have anything major, just coffee and cake in the afternoons after lectures.
“There’s a bit of a town rumour that their first date was here, but I have no idea if that’s true.
“It wasn’t exactly something you asked them about, but yes, there’s a chance it could have been here.
“The interest we’ve had since though, has been incredible.
“People come around here all the time and ask us which seat they used to sit in and they all want their photographs taken there, which is really crazy.”
Kate and Wills were so low-key that Linda claims some of her staff didn’t even realise they were serving royalty at the time.
She said: “I remember the girl who used to work for us, an Irish girl called Claire, she didn’t realise it was William that she was serving.
“I stopped her and I said ‘that’s Prince William you know’ and she just about passed out.
“She said she was going to keep the cup that he had been drinking from and not wash it, but we got it off her and washed it in the end.
“But it was easy not to notice them, they blended in really well up here.
“Everyone just took Wills as any other person – he even used to go in Tescos in the evenings and he’d be wandering around with a baseball cap on just like any other student buying something for his tea.
“And when they were in here, they weren’t touchy-feely at all, it was all very low key.
“The only reason you would have known they were together was because of the rumours going around the town.
“Kate also used to come in alone quite a lot when she was studying and she was lovely, just really well mannered and polite.
“She just seemed like a normal young girl really, very ordinary, but obviously she wasn’t.”
With Linda and John now hanging up their pinnies to start an early retirement, they have put the shop up for sale and insist it’s the perfect opportunity for an ambitious couple to take over.
Linda, originally from Edinburgh, said: “We’ve been doing this for 12 years and we’ve had some real good times and we just decided that it was time to do something a bit different before it gets too late.
“I think we made it into a place that people want to come, so hopefully whoever buys it from us will carry on in the same vain because there’s no reason not to really – it’s a formula that seems to work, so we’re hoping that it will continue.
“I’d like to think the customers came because of the coffee and cake, but I guess Will and Kate’s presence had a role to play in our success as well.
“I’ve had a lot of people are saying, ‘I hope it doesn’t close, I hope it doesn’t change’, but that’s up to the new owners what happens to it.
Admittedly, it’s going to be quite strange not coming here every day, but it’s time to move on, we like renovating houses so that’s our next project, renovating an old house at East Neuk and I’m looking forward to having more time to do that.”
