WATCH: Wild Pancakes cafe opens at new Inverness address in bid to fund mum's cancer treatment
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AN INVERNESS pancake cafe has opened doors of their new city premises today in a bid to grow the business to support a mothers' cancer treatment.
Formerly located on Church Street, Wild Pancakes has now opened its doors to their new space on Inglis Street, which offers extra seating (80 seats in total) and a larger kitchen space.
Owner Sandis Mitenbergs and his family first started the cafe to find a calmer lifestyle and to support cancer treatment for his wife, Liene Krievina (41).
Now the family are looking to boost the income from the business in order to cover costs for a life-saving treatment offered in California.
A fundraiser is currently ongoing to finance lifesaving treatment for Mrs Krievina, who is affected by stage four brain cancer and who was recently refused surgery both in the UK and Latvia due to the high risk of the operation, with her last surgery leaving her almost completely blind.
Her hope is now to travel to California for specialised treatment at a metabolic clinic – however to travel they need to raise £20,000.
Their daughter Sindy (22) who has been working at the cafe since it opened in 2018, said about their first day in the new premises: "Everything has gone well so far.
"We were urgently needing new premises as we were always having queues out the door at weekends and wed never be able to fit our customers in, now we have about triple the space both in the kitchen and at tales so that is definitely an improvement."
Talking about her mother's cancer treatment, she said: "Unfortunately this is a last-stage attempt as no other treatment options are a possibility at this point.
"We started the fundraiser last week and it's going very well so far, we have raised just over £600. We are hoping to organise more events and to spread the word more in the coming months.
"It's very difficult to do this while running the cafe but we'll do our best to promote it ad get the word out."
She said they are hoping to organise a sponsored walk from Nairn to Grantown-on-Spey with the help of Nairn county Football club and possibly other events in the future.
The cafe will be open every day from 8am to 6pm.
