Oats Healthy Living Store Cafe - Torbay

This was our second visit to this health store as we found it 2 years ago whilst holidaying in Devon. The owners are friendly helpful the shop seems to carry a wide variety of food health items. There is a little cafe at the back of the shop where we sat had a coffee. They make great cakes biscuits all great for a gluten dairy free diet. Worth the visit.

Rainy Friday lunch time, lucky find in main shopping street in Brixham. Good selection of interesting and tasty salads. We chose the summer special pitta stuffed with falafel and hummus. Excellent. They have inside and pavement seating and do takeaway.

We had lunch here because I noticed they did vegetarian and vegan options. Although there were only 4 tables outside this suited us because of how hot it was. I ordered 2 organic salad platters, one with Brie Cheddar for my partner (meat eater and one with hummus for myself. According to the menu it states Vg which means vegan at the top of menu. So technically both meals should be vegan. We enjoyed the lunch platters and I went inside the shop to pay. When asked if the butter that came with the bread on our meals was vegan, I was horrified to be told it wasn 't. It 's dairy! I pointed out to her of the ambiguity of the menu labelling and she tried to blame the error on another member of staff (partner? for miscommunication. Including tea (rather milky I thought it could be dairy , it cost £16.50. The woman actually thought that discounting £1.50 from the bill would redeem herself. I was very disappointed and sick to my stomach that someone spiked my food. It was a good job I wasn 't allergic to dairy too. They need to revise their menu because who knows someone has been through this before I noticed. I tweeted what happened to The Vegan Society and hopefully everyone will be made aware of the lack of attention in planning for vegans like myself.

This appears to be a health store that carries an excellent range of natural and organic foods as well as eco friendly detergents etc. The coffee bit seems to be a sideline, with homemade cake and excellent, freshly made coffee.

I booked a birthday celebratory lunch at Oats. Sally was amazingly helpful. We all had homemade soup with homemade bread. Generous portion size, tasty and hot. Then Sally bought out the birthday cake. It was huge and so beautiful lots of cream and raspberries. Now Oats is in new premises on Fore Street it had a café area at the front of the shop and a bigger area at the rear. We took over this space. Everything was clean, bright and welcoming. The atmosphere was fun as we celebrated the birthdays of two of our party. Alan and Sally could not have been more helpful. Thank you.