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Date: 5/10/2021
GRANBY – A catering company with a long history in the town of Granby will soon expand their offerings to include a dine-in cafe space.
Laurie Bernier, who owns Something Special Catering Inc. with her husband Barry, said the name Something Special Catering had been known in Granby for decades with her husband starting the business around 1985. “My husband started it and I joined in with him and partnered with him, he had it at the Chateau Harmony building,” she said.
She said at that time Barry ran both a restaurant and catering business, but they “went back and forth with opening and shutting for a while.” After moving to and opening a restaurant in Nantucket, RI, she said they decided to return to Granby after having children to be closer to family.
“We came back because we had kids, reopened Something Special again in like 2003-2004. Then of course we ended up shutting it down again because of our kids. Restaurant field work, you work like 60 hours,” she said. “We were doing breakfast, lunch, dinner and catering.”
However, she said they bought the building on Route 202 and “decided to keep it.” Since then, Laurie said she and Barry have been running the catering business for about a decade. Now, she said as she goes into retirement the pair is ready to get back into the restaurant business.
“We’ve been doing just catering for 10 years or so, two of my kids are all grown up now. I decided as my retirement, we wanted to get back to serving the community,” she said. “We’ve been working on opening our cafe, we’re focused on getting into supporting the local communities, local businesses around me.”
While she couldn’t name any specific businesses she said she’d already been in talks with local farms and companies “to work with and support them.”
She said when the cafe space in the old Route 202 building opened they would scale back on their catering services that were offered. “We’re going to do pickups and drop-offs, not the full service that we used to do,” she said.
The planned opening for the cafe, she said, was June 9, but she said there were still a couple of items that needed to be finished prior to their opening the doors of the space. One of those items, she explained, was receiving their occupancy permit from the fire department. She explained at the time she spoke to Reminder Publishing, she was expecting a call regarding the permit at any day.
She said that opening a space in Granby was slightly more difficult as there were “certain things we don’t have with the town that other towns are able to acquire.” One example, she said, was needing to get approval from the Department of Environmental Protection “for the well.”
In an announcement about the cafe, Barry and Laurie described the cafe as a “farmhouse style cafe” with an “open concept and traditional historic decor.” In addition to a “countertop service area,” the cafe will also offer customers an opportunity to dine outdoors with a “spacious patio surrounded by a white picket fence.”
Additionally, the announcement stated that they would support local artists and residents by including “paintings of the surrounding farmlands by a local artist hanging in the dining room; menus decorated by the drawings of another local artist; tables dressed up with handmade country checkered tablecloths; fresh flowers and landscaping on our patio area; and a gas fireplace a the head of our indoor dining room.”
When the space is officially opened and in use, she said they would be serving both breakfast and lunch five days a week from Wednesday to Sunday from 7 a.m. to 2 p.m. “to start with.” In addition to sit-down dining options, Laurie said that they will also have a space devoted to “grab and go options” such as coffee and pastries that people can buy quickly if they happen to be in a hurry.
They also have plans to rent out the space for “small parties, [or] small events” after hours. Another idea the pair has is to bring back monthly meal clubs that they used to host. “We used to do that a long time ago. It’s pretty much one fixed price, from soup to nuts,” she said.
Laurie said the couple was looking forward to both serving the community and offering dine-in service once again.
Those interested in more information should visit the Something Special Catering Inc. Facebook page or the website at https://www.somethingspecialcateringservice.com.