How a Launceston couple built Cloud Desserts from a very hard year

To most people walking through the door, Cloud Desserts is somewhere to grab a waffle, a crepe or a milkshake. To the two men who built it, the little Launceston shop stands for something much bigger. It stands for starting again, for finding freedom, and for building a life that for a long time felt out of reach.

A wedding he never chose

One half of the couple behind the shop is British-born and South Asian, and grew up under heavy family pressure around marriage and how a life was supposed to look. He had already been with his partner, Gianni, for five years, and his family had always liked him. Then, following the death of an uncle, he met more of his extended family. They did not accept that he was gay. He says he was shunned and made to feel there was something wrong with who he was.

The pressure became overwhelming, and he was sent to Pakistan. He was married on the day he arrived. His passport and money were taken from him, and he says he felt he had no choice but to comply with what was being imposed on him.

Getting home, and choosing Cornwall

Gianni refused to give up on him. He told the family a story, that his partner needed to return to the UK immediately for heart surgery, and booked the ticket home. The passport was withheld at first, and only handed back after a confrontation.

Once he was back in the UK, Gianni suggested they leave the area altogether and start again somewhere in Devon or Cornwall. Gianni’s mother lives in Paignton, so the search for a new start began nearby. Eventually a landlady in Launceston heard their story and offered them a home, and that is how the couple ended up in Cornwall.

Cooking his way out of depression

The move did not fix things overnight. He was severely depressed when they first arrived and wasn’t working, and he had a lot of empty time on his hands. He began filling it by cooking at home.

What happened next surprised him. People loved the food, and watching their faces light up when they tried something he had made gave him back a sense of purpose. It became something he and Gianni built together too, and baking and cooking turned into a shared part of their life as a couple.

The joke that became a shop

At the time, he was running a vape business, but tightening government regulation was squeezing the trade and the couple had a five-year shop tenancy to think about. Launceston, they noticed, had some lovely places to eat, but nowhere dedicated purely to dessert.

One evening the pair sat craving something sweet. “Wouldn’t it be great if Launceston had a dessert shop?” one of them said. Gianni laughed and replied, “We should open one ourselves.”

It was a throwaway line between two people who, by their own account, had often struggled with confidence and doubted they were achieving what they were capable of. But the idea stuck.

Every spare hour, and every spare pound

They started with very little money. Gianni took on as much overtime as he could and barely slept, and every penny went straight back into the dream, decorating the shop, buying equipment and sourcing ingredients. Slowly, an empty unit turned into Cloud Desserts. When they began advertising the idea on the Launceston Notice Board, the response caught them off guard. People were excited about a dessert shop before the doors had even opened.

Losing Coco

They had originally hoped to open towards the end of April. Then they lost their dog, Coco.

Coco had been with the couple through the move to Cornwall and everything that came before it and after it, including the hardest parts of building the business. “She wasn’t just our dog, she was our child,” one of the owners says. Her death delayed the opening while the couple grieved. When Coco’s ashes came home, they describe a strange sense of peace, a feeling that she was back where she belonged, and the point at which they felt ready to get their lives moving again, not because the grief had passed, but because they wanted to carry her love forward into what they were building.

Open, and named after something soft

Cloud Desserts finally opened its doors on 28 May, and the response from the town has been, in the couple’s words, incredible. A post sharing their story on Facebook was met with dozens of reactions, comments and shares, and messages from people who said it had touched them.

Even the name has its own small story. While testing waffles and crepes, Gianni said cakes should be soft and airy, “like a cloud.” The name followed immediately after.

For years, one of the two men behind the counter was made to feel he should be ashamed of who he loved. These days, when he stands inside Cloud Desserts and watches people enjoy something he and Gianni built together, he says he still sometimes struggles to believe how far they have come.