AN AWARD-winning zero-waste shop has announced that it is in the process of expanding and moving to a new location.

In a Facebook post on Monday, January 2, refill shop and café Lemon & Jinja announced that it would be moving to a new, larger location.

Jess Dugdale, who started the business in 2019, explained: “We were basically set up in Basepoint in Romsey, and that was originally started as an industrial estate for small businesses to start their businesses.

“So, we moved in one small unit and then within six months we doubled in size, and we’ve basically been too big for our unit for the last three years, and really struggling to find somewhere.

“And where they’ve increased their rent quite a lot it’s just not sustainable for us to stay here anymore, so we’ve finally found somewhere; it will probably be about triple the size of where we are now.”

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At time of writing, the new space is being prepared for Lemon & Jinja to move into, which it will do at the end of January.

The new location will offer increased space for both the shop and the café, with some of the space going towards a kitchen so the café can offer a greater range of food.

Space is also being set aside to host community workshops and events.

Jess said that she feels “really excited” about the move, adding: “I’m nervous, if I’m honest, because we’ve been talking about it for so long, and now that it’s finally happen it doesn’t feel real.

“It’s totally what we need to do in order to stay on top of everything, but I’m really excited.”

She continued: “Because we’re overfilling where we are - we’ve got too much stuff in such a small space – we just can’t expand where we want to.

“Where we’re really passionate in is the community workshops that we want to run, and we just can’t offer that in the space that we have now.

“So not only are the shop and café expanding, but also the community side of the business, and that’s obviously really important.”

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Jess added that she wants to thank her team, as well as the Romsey community.

She said: “We stayed open during lockdown, and it was our customers that kept us open.

“We haven’t closed, unless it’s been over the Christmas break we’ve stayed open the whole time that everything’s been going on.

“We’ve had a cost of living crisis, we’ve had Covid, we’ve had everything, we’ve had the war, and that’s really affected all our prices as well.

“Yet, we still have our loyal customers coming in day in, day out, and really supporting us.”

Lemon & Jinja will remain open in its current location until the end of January, when it will move to its new home.