This is a household with a bit of a thing for caffeine. My friends have laughed before when my kids have requested to go out for a coffee and both of my children first tried food in one of the coffee shops near us (yes it was fruit toast and yes they both loved it!) Recently at the park I’d seen my son playing cafes with a friend and what he said really made me giggle. Did he ask if his friend wanted a coffee? Nope, he asked what coffee he wanted. I told him he’s probably like a latte. So when we were offered the chance to review this sweet wooden shop and cafe from George I knew that it was likely to be pretty popular in our house!
The cafe itself arrives flatpacked and though it wasn’t too tricky to put together it did take me nearly an hour. It is a big item though and I’m not sure if I was really helped or hindered by my four year old son’s help. I like to get him involved in putting together flat pack things though as it gives me a bit of company and I figure it’s a pretty useful lifeskill for him!
The cafe comes with a cute little chalk menu board for you to write on and has a cotton awning that gives it a sweet vintage look. We’ve been playing with it using pretend toy food, cups and teapots that we already had but George also do a fabulous looking wooden toy till along with a gorgeous cake stand and some rather cool looking food crates if you want to kit it out properly.
Both my four year old and my two year old have had great fun playing with this toy, one of the things I love about it is that it’s big enough for them both to share and play with together with no arguing! They love to fill the shelves up with things to sell and my daughter is getting well trained for a future making me cups of tea. The menu board is a great idea too as it’s helping us teach our son letter and word recognition.
My husband and I have also really enjoyed it as we pop some ‘cafe music’ onto YouTube and then sit around while we get the kids to be the cafe staff for us. I can see a lot of potential in that!
Overall this toy feels well made and at £35 it’s really good value for something that my children will get a lot of use of.
Disclaimer – we were sent the George play shop and cafe in order to review it.
I am considering getting this for Peanut for Xmas, it looks like it has got great play value and would go down very well with her older siblings too!
Yes, it’s nice having a toy they can all use at the same tie isn’t it!
Hi! I don’t know where to start on your site – it looks like you have some amazing resources on here! I thought I’d take a look at this page though, as we just (about two weeks ago) bought our daughter the George Kitchen from the same range. It’s still boxed up and waiting for her to achieve a whole week’s worth of ‘getting dressed’ on her reward chart though before we build it. Hopefully that might be Thursday if all goes to plan, because I for one am getting rather impatient and can’t wait to play with it, as I never had one when I was little #livingvicariouslythroughmythreeyearold!!
I have a feeling that we’ll only be offered tea or coffee though, as we’re filter coffee drinkers here.
Looking forward to spending some time here!
Ah, thank you Sarah that’s very kind 🙂 (We broke our filter machine two weeks ago, it was a very, very sad day…!)