The family who have run the Park Café at Swanley Park for 15 years are retiring. The café stays open under new management, Swanley Town Council says.

The family who have run the Park Café at Swanley Park for 15 years are retiring. Swanley Town Council announced it on Monday and thanked them for “15 years of hard work, investment, friendship, and service”. (Swanley Town Council, Park Café owners hang up the oven gloves!, 19 October 2026)

Brothers İsmet and Bülent “Tony” Levent run the café and the park’s separate ice cream concession through their company, IBL Catering Ltd. Their wives and business partners, Canan “Jan” and Gülen “Lesley”, have worked alongside them.

The café is not closing. The council says it will carry on under new management, and visitors should see no disruption. It has not said who is taking over.

Three eras of Swanley Park

The council says the family’s time at the park spanned three different ways of running it:

  • private management of the park’s leisure activities by Weston Leisure
  • then by Can You Experience
  • then direct management by Swanley Town Council, which owns the park, from around ten years ago

In February 2017 the town council said it had “taken back the concession for the park” and would run all the activities with its own staff. (Swanley Town Council, More Surprises As Café Re-Opens In Park, 14 February 2017)

Since then the council lists pedalos on the lake, a rebuilt and larger Water Park, the Barnyard soft play centre, the Dawn to Dusk Nursery, a dog exercise area, the Plunge Waterslide and new public toilets among its projects at the park.

The 2020 refit

The café itself changed most in early 2020. The council said then that it had been transformed in six weeks, with a new kitchen and serving areas and digital menu screens, at a cost of more than £50,000. The brothers did most of the work themselves. (Swanley Town Council, Café takes on new lease of life, 14 February 2020)

The refit added a double pizza oven that could turn out a pizza every two minutes. The café had opened only six months a year before that, and the plan was to move towards a year-round service.

Monday’s announcement says the family also kept the café going through the pandemic and “worked extremely hard to keep costs down” as costs for small businesses rose.

What the council and the family said

Ryan Hayman, the town council’s chief executive, was Parks Director from 2017 to 2020. “They have not simply been the people who ran the Café; they have been part of the fabric of Swanley Park,” he said.

“We will miss having them around the Park enormously, but we wish İsmet, Tony, Jan and Lesley every happiness as they begin this next chapter.”

George Brooker, the council’s Parks and Open Spaces Manager, first knew the park as a volunteer on the Swanley New Barn Railway. “Without their incredible dedication, hard work, and passion we wouldn’t have the Swanley Park we love and recognise today,” he said.

İsmet Levent said: “It is very sad for us to be retiring after 15 years at Swanley Park. This place has been a very big part of our lives, and we have met so many wonderful people along the way.”

“It is not easy to say goodbye, but we know we are leaving with many happy memories,” he said.

What it means for visitors

Nothing changes on a visit to the park: the café stays open. The town council has said it hopes to replace the Swanley Park playground completely “within the next couple of years”, after rebuilding four other playgrounds in the town this year.

For other places to take children, see our guides to parks and playgrounds around Sevenoaks district and soft play near Sevenoaks. Cafés and shops trading in the town are on our Swanley business directory.

Sources

Image: the Park Café owners with Swanley Town Council staff, supplied by Swanley Town Council with its 19 October announcement.