Cardiff's Oldest Health Food Shop: Beanfreaks Since 1978

In 1978, Kevin opened a health food shop on Victoria Bridge in Penarth. He lived above it. That’s where Beanfreaks started, not with a brand strategy or a market opportunity, but with a person who cared about food and wanted to sell it to people who did too.

Nearly fifty years later, Beanfreaks is still independent, still in South Wales, and still run on the same principle: stock good things, know what you’re selling, and be genuinely helpful to the person standing in front of you.

A lot has changed in between.

Newport and the Happy Carrot Bistro

The first expansion took Beanfreaks across the water to Newport. The Upper Dock Street store was thriving by 1990 and this one had a café downstairs called The Happy Carrot Bistro. It’s the branch people who grew up in Newport sometimes mention, usually with a specific dish they remember. A period when health food was becoming less niche and more neighbourhood.

St Mary Street: celebrities and a dog called Schnorbitz

The St Mary Street store in Cardiff city centre followed, and the grand opening was something. Bernie Winters cut the ribbon. If you’re of a certain age you’ll remember Bernie Winters; if you’re not, he was one half of a double act who brought his St Bernard, Schnorbitz, everywhere he went. Schnorbitz came to the opening. There are photos.

The St Mary Street store put Beanfreaks in the heart of the city at a time when St Mary Street still had traffic on it. The pedestrianisation didn’t come until later, and the archive photos show cars parked outside where you’d now walk.

1995: Gladiators comes to Cardiff

By 1995, Beanfreaks was established enough that Kim Betts, Lightning from the original Gladiators TV series, came to Cardiff for a signing. If you were a child in the mid-90s, Gladiators was a very big deal. Lightning was one of the most recognisable faces on British television. That she came to a health food shop in Cardiff says something about where the shop sat in the city’s consciousness.

What’s gone, what’s stayed

The Penarth shop is gone. So is St Mary Street, and Newport. The estate agents and coffee chains that replaced independent retailers on those streets did what they did everywhere.

What stayed is the three Cardiff stores: Roath on Albany Road, Canton on Cowbridge Road East, and Royal Arcade in the Morgan Quarter. Three different neighbourhoods, three different kinds of customers, but the same shelves, the same approach, the same staff who actually know what they’re talking about when you ask about a supplement.

The product range has changed enormously, obviously. In 1978 the health food world was largely pulses, grains, and a few vitamins. Today the shelves carry organic groceries, adaptogen blends, vegan essentials, and everything in between. But the principle of curation, stocking things because they’re genuinely good rather than cheap to source or easy to shift, hasn’t moved.

Nearly fifty years is a long time

Most independent retailers don’t make it. The ones that do tend to have something the chains can’t replicate: actual knowledge, a point of view, and people who’ve been there long enough to know what works and what doesn’t.

Beanfreaks has been there long enough that customers bring their children in, and sometimes their grandchildren. Long enough that the staff can tell you what sold in the 90s and what replaced it, and why. Long enough that “since 1978” isn’t just a line on the logo. It’s a genuine claim that means something.

Still local. Still helpful. Still Beanfreaks.

Find us at Roath, Canton, and Royal Arcade in Cardiff.