The owner of a new ice-cream and dessert restaurant in Budleigh Salterton hopes her business can give youngsters in the town a place to go.

Granny Gothards opened last week in High Street, becoming the first place in Budleigh to offer a place for people to sit down with ice-cream, waffles and other desserts.

Youngsters from St Peter’s Primary School were invited to taste the Granny Gothards product and mayor Tom Wright helped officially open the new eating venue.

Business owner Amanda Stansfield, who has lived in the town for six years, said she hoped it would give the town’s younger generation a place to meet friends and socialise.

She said: “There is nowhere especially for teenagers to go and have something to eat and sit indoors.

“The cafés in the town have a fairly older clientele and even on a wet day recently we had some 14 to 16-year-olds come in.”

Amanda has run an ice-cream supply business from a farm in Somerset for the last seven years and the ‘Granny Gothards’ product is not new to people in Budleigh.

In that time, the company has exported its produce across the world and has also been available for customers of Spar in Fore Street.

For some time Amanda has been looking for premises in her home town and a chance walk through Budleigh town centre gave her the opportunity to make this a reality.

She said: “I was walking past the old King Billy pub when I saw it was up for rent – I thought this is the opportunity I need.

“It’s not our usual business model to have a restaurant but it was too good an opportunity to miss.”

A number of pupils from St Peter’s Primary School had noticed the new ice cream and dessert restaurant was set to open and word spread across the playground.

Amanda said she was approached by the school to let some of the pupils come down for the official opening.

Mayor Tom Wright also sampled an ice-cream while helping to welcome the business to Budleigh.