The Warren, an award-winning restaurant in Carmarthen that closed a year ago, has reopened thanks to the vision of its owner and the efforts of more than 20 local volunteers. The restaurant, named in the Good Food Guide every year between 2019 and 2025 and named best local restaurant in Wales in 2020, shut in September 2025.
From burnout to hibernation
Chef and owner Deri Reed opened The Warren in 2016. He described suffering from “burn out” in September last year, saying “I was just not able to do it anymore”. The building sat empty for nearly a year, but an empty building still costs money, and the pot of money built up by The Warren’s success was getting smaller and smaller.
“I had finally had a break from actually running a business, but I still had the financial and emotional responsibility of an empty restaurant. Eventually my brother Berian asked me a very simple question - ‘how can I help?’” said Reed. They initially decided to sell, but then started asking whether they could try to reopen together.
Volunteers bring the restaurant back to life
Reed put out a video asking whether anyone would be interested in helping reopen the restaurant. “We started volunteer days. The first day was incredibly emotional for me. I cried for the first ten minutes because coming back into the building brought back all of the weight of what had happened. But then something changed. People just started getting on with it,” he said. They cleaned the kitchen, dusted the building, cleared things out and slowly started bringing the place back to life. So far, 21 volunteers have been involved.
The Warren reopened for Sunday lunches and is now open on Friday and Saturday nights as well as Sundays. Tracy Ives is the new ‘kitchen lead’, while Reed is one of three directors.
A new philosophy and community focus
“The bigger change is the philosophy behind it,” said Reed. “Everyone working here is paid £15 an hour, regardless of their role. That’s above the real Living Wage. I’m on £15 an hour too. We’re effectively testing a cooperative model without formally becoming a co-op yet.”
Reed also said: “I want to blow out of the water this idea that you have to tip in hospitality. I’ve never felt comfortable with that, with customers feeling like they need to tip. I hate the illusion that it’s created. I want my staff to love being here; I don’t want them to do a good job just because they want a tip. So we don’t want your tips. If people want to give extra money we ask them to put it into our community food projects instead.”
“The commercial restaurant is only one half of what we’re trying to create,” he added. “The other half is a community space. We’re working on projects that will happen outside our commercial opening hours. One idea is a collective buying group, where people can access the same quality of organic and local ingredients that we buy here, but at cost price. We’re also working on a regular community gathering - something that allows people to use the building and connect with each other without the restaurant simply being somewhere you go if you have enough money to eat out.”
“I genuinely don’t think the Warren would be open today if those volunteers hadn’t turned up. They showed me that people didn’t just want the restaurant back - they were prepared to help make it happen,” said Reed. “Before, I was taking things week by week and eventually burnt myself out. Now we’ve got a vision which is much longer-term. My attitude is basically: I’ll keep doing this for as long as people want it.”
