Laois village's cute coffee van forced to shut down after vandalism
Mobile café in Rosenallis in Slieve Bloom mountains only open one month
A lovely new Laois business that was giving part of its proceeds to develop the community, has announced it is closing down, just a month after it opened.
Lily's Coffee Van is a cheery bright green converted horsebox in Rosenallis village, opened by local man Brian Farrell on March 2, creating two jobs for local employees.
Lily's Coffee proprietor Brian Farrell.
On St Patrick's Day, he had even donated €100 from the proceeds to Laois charities The Cuisle Centre and Portlaoise Action to Homelessness.
While Lily's was warmly welcomed by the local community and visitors to the Slieve Blooms, it was also unfortunately quickly targeted by vandals.
Mr Farrell made his shock announcement of its closure in a statement on the business' social media page on April 8.
"Hi everyone, I have had to make a very difficult decision to close lily's coffee, this was not an easy decision for me personally as I had big plans for this project," he said.
He said there were a number of factors that led to the decision.
"Like any business costs are high, since opening lily's has been vandalized more than once, there has been intimidation, horrible things said to me personally, it's come to a point of no return unfortunately.
"I'm heart broken because this was a genuine effort to bring a community together to try and revive our village, a lot of time and effort went into lily's coffee people will be sad its gone but it is what it is, I would like to thank everyone that supported lily's and the team that helped out for there hard work. kind regards Brian".