Health food store and cafe set to close after 30 years
Health food store and cafe La Ruca is set to close in February 2027 after 30 years on the Gloucester Road. Owners Patricia and Alfonso Alvarez are to shut up shop when their lease expires.
La Ruca was among the first coffee shops in the area. Its ‘fair trade’ goods and upstairs cafe and community space set a template for many businesses that followed in the area.
Patricia says: “We’ve always been well supported as people around here are very conscientious about fairly traded goods.
“With the regular visitors to the cafe it’s very much like a family. Some of them I don’t really want to tell that we’re going to close.”.
“But working six days a week is hard after all this time, and with the lease coming to an end we’ve decided that’s it”.
The closure of La Ruca marks the end of an era for the couple, who fled Chile as student opponents of the repressive Pinochet regime in the 1970s.
“It was either prison or leave”, says Patricia. “We knew nothing about England - but students at the London School of Economics sponsored us to come over.
“We didn’t know anything about Bristol either, but met someone who offered us accommodation here.”
Alfonso worked in a factory and then became a hospital technician, while Patricia spent 10 years as a social worker before taking redundancy. The small pay-off she received enabled them to rent their premises on the Gloucester Road, while also raising three daughters.
“We knew nothing about health food stores – but one day I was with Alfonso in Bath and I saw one I really liked. I said to him ‘I’d like to open a shop like that’ and he said ‘OK’.
They chose Gloucester Road after seeing it while campaigning against the Pinochet regime with Amnesty International. It’s no coincidence that a few years later, Amnesty opened their bookshop just a few doors up the road.
So what differences has Patricia seen over 30 years on the Gloucester Road?
“There have been a lot of changes but they have mostly been for the better. There are many more coffee shops now, but we have never felt the need to compete. Another business opens and people are still friendly.”
