A FAMILY-OWNED café can serve more than three times its original customer capacity following its expansion next door.
The Bento Factory, in St Thomas Street, Winchester is celebrating its growth after successfully moving into a bigger unit next door to accommodate its growing customer base.
The Asian café, which opened in 2019, has been running in the larger space since September and now has plans to open during the evenings over the weekend to offer a Japanese tapas-style bar.
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Director and owner Jo Lao, 37, said: “It was quite small next door so were limited in what we could do and we were always over capacity. My parents own both premises so we swapped.
“The response has been really good and we’ve got more customers and lots of regulars coming back but of course, we would always welcome more. We have invested so much into this so we do really need the business in return.
“We travel quite a bit and like the stuff we eat when we travel. When we were next door originally we were never thinking we would do all that we do now.
“We’re probably the only café that makes all its stuff rather than buying it in. It’s quite sad when you see every café along the High Street is offering the same thing so we wanted to change that.
“We never expected it to get as busy as this. The next move is that we are going to open in the evenings over the weekend like a Japanese tapas bar.”
The café hired three more people following the expansion and now has four full-time and three part-time staff members.
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The business has the same layout and menu with Vietnamese, Sri Lankan and Japanese influences. In the original unit, the family only had room for 12 customers but can now sit up to 40 people in addition to having space for an extra 16 outside in the new space.
While Jo does all the baking, her brother Vinnie is in charge of the kitchen and is an experienced barista introducing teas and coffees from across the globe to Winchester visitors.
The Bento Factory’s vision is to create convenient health-food options for busy professionals, freshly prepared ‘bento lunch boxes’ (a takeaway Japanese-inspired lunch box) for people to balance their nutrition and schedules.
The café area offers patisserie cakes, pastries and artisanal coffee from around the world.
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