Plunge taken on opening new cafe seems to be paying off
WANTING another cafe in the bottom floor of their Petridish site in Stafford St, Dunedin, Kate and Jason Lindsey wondered who would want to open a hospitality business in the midst of a pandemic.
Well, they needed only look at each other.
‘‘We had conversations . . . we just kind of thought there’s noone in their right minds that’s going to start a cafe in our building right now.
‘‘We still wanted to have a cafe in the building for our tenants — so we just decided to do it ourselves.’’
The Dish opened at the end of July. It offers coffee, breakfast, beer, Mexican food and other options.
‘‘It’s been really good — we’re doing probably twice as good [revenuewise] as what we had targeted to do.’’
He said they would be doing even better once they were able to host events again.
About 30% of The Dish’s customers come from the coworking space upstairs, while 70% are visitors from other parts of town.
‘‘That’s probably why we’re doing so much better than we anticipated. We’d kind of based it on what we’d get out of the building and then a little bit extra from outside.
‘‘The feedback on what we’re doing’s been really good.’’
A specialty Mr Lindsey had brought over from the United States and was offering at The Dish was the breakfast burrito.
‘‘Kind of an uncommon thing here in New Zealand . . . they’re catching on.’’
Petridish has largely been operated by just the Lindseys for four years, Mr Lindsey said.
But they have now brought in five employees — two of whom are in the cafe — and are looking at hiring a sixth person.
❛ we just kind of thought there’s noone in their right minds that’s going to start a cafe in our building right now