A new café is bringing a community together - as well as serving them great cake, good coffee and a best-selling Build a Breakfast Bap.

The Pitstop Café, at the Pinetrees Community Centre in Pinehurst, only opened in April but already it has plenty of customers and is becoming a popular gathering place. The café was set up by Central Swindon North Parish Council’s community assets manager Bernice Mack – and she says it was the first time she has taken the reins of such a project.

“I only started working here in March last year – and that was two hours a day as a cleaner! But when this job came up, I went for it,” she said.

Bernice, who has lived in Pinehurst for over 30 years, has been assets manager for 11 months and has enjoyed seeing the café become a real success, with lots of regular customers.

“This is what I’m really, really proud of. It’s brilliant! People keep coming back,” she said.

The parish council took over the running of Pinetrees from Swindon Borough Council last year.

“The kitchen was there but nothing else,” Bernice said. “We built it up from scratch. The parish council asked me to look into it and I pulled it all together. I painted walls and units and got everything we needed.

“They decided they wanted a café in the centre and tasked me to look into whether it was feasible. There was a very empty space before. There’s nowhere else around here you can go, and a lot of elderly residents live in the area. We wanted to bring the community back in to use the building, to meet up, and make friends.”

She said they considered a few names before setting on the Pitstop Café: “This was the name that stuck, as you can eat in, or grab it and go.”

The café was opened by the then Mayor of Swindon, Coun Maureen Penny on April 17. Now it is open Monday to Friday from 8.30am to 2pm, with the possibility of longer opening hours in the future.

The menu includes the Build a Breakfast Bap – with a price of £1.75 for a one-item bap, and a choice of up to six fillings to add to the mix. You can order egg, beans or mushroom on toast, a variety of sandwiches and toasties, Cornish pasties and jacket potatoes.

On Tuesdays, a popular lunch special is served for £2.75, and Bernice is looking into doing special offers each day of the week.

The café is run by Bob Mack, who also makes a range of homemade cakes, such as Victoria sponge, lemon drizzle, chocolate brownies, shortbread and cookies.

He is helped by volunteers and the café will soon host students from Horizons College, to give them work experience.

“The majority of our customers are people who live in the area, but we do have taxi drivers dropping in. On Friday we have the Chronic Pain Group in the café – and a walkers group.

“We’re looking at setting up other groups, like a board games session or a knit and natter group. We want to get people talking and to have somewhere to meet and make friends. We’re trying to keep prices down.”

You can find the café in the Pinetrees Communtiy Centre in the Circle, Pinehurst. For more information visit their page on Facebook @TheParishPitStop.