After 15 Years and Three Different Park Managers, Swanley Park's Café Owners Are Hanging Up Their Oven Gloves

İsmet and Bülent "Tony" Levent of IBL Catering Ltd, along with business partners and wives Canan "Jan" and Gülen "Lesley", are retiring after 15 years running the Park Café and a separate ice cream concession at Swanley Park - a stretch that's spanned three completely different eras of how the park itself was run.

When the family took over the food and drink concession, Swanley Park's leisure activities were privately managed, first by Weston Leisure, then by Can You Experience, before Swanley Town Council took the park into direct management itself around ten years ago. Through all three, the Café grew from what the council describes as "a small facility with a limited menu" into a transformed space with a new kitchen and serving areas, and the family started looking at offering a more year-round service rather than just the summer season.

They kept the Café running through the pandemic, too, and more recently through the cost pressures that have squeezed small hospitality businesses generally - all while the park around them went through what the council calls "an extraordinary programme of investment," including pedalos on the lake, the Barnyard soft play, the Dawn to Dusk Nursery, the Awe and Wonder outdoor play area and the Plunge Waterslide.

Swanley Town Council CEO Ryan Hayman, who worked with the family both as Parks Director between 2017 and 2020 and now as CEO, didn't hold back on the tribute: "They have not simply been the people who ran the Café; they have been part of the fabric of Swanley Park... Without their incredible dedication, hard work, and passion we wouldn't have the Swanley Park we love and recognise today." Parks and Open Spaces Manager George Brooker, who's known the family "over half" his life through IBL's wider catering business, added: "They have become part of the Park family, and their presence will certainly be missed."

For regular visitors, the practical news is the reassuring part: the council says the retirement won't disrupt the Café, which will carry on operating as normal while new arrangements are put in place.

Source: Swanley Town Council