Monday, April 21, 2014

The great unveiling! Welcome to Mornington Crescent Tokyo

Drumroll.... Today the dream became an official reality - At 3pm the hokenjyo lady visited the space and we now have our business permits!

Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to my little shop in Tokyo - welcome to Mornington Crescent!

A suitably stamped celebratory Battenberg :)

Mornington Crescent Tokyo begins life as a little baking school, teaching Great British Home Baking to small groups, and as an online shop with authentic British seasonal and cultural treats, deliverable across Japan by cool-bin refrigerated and frozen delivery services.

I, and almost everyone I have told about my until now secret project, would also love it to be a bakery/ cafe. While this phase of the launch doesn't yet include a regular cafe, we do plan to try out bakery days in the form of the "occasional bakery" - keep in touch on Facebook and Twitter to find out when!

The space itself is a cosy size, but I already love it. I lived in Higashi Azabu a few years ago for 3 years and enjoyed the close-to-Azabu Juban station yet back-street/small neighbourhood vibe it has. It seems that there is always a new restaurant or mom-and-pop shop to discover, and I really look forward to being a new and hopefully exciting part of the local community.

It's just a 3 minute stroll from Nissin supermarket, tucked in the back streets. There are a few cosmetic things still to finish at the space - the shop sign being made near my hometown in Greater Manchester and shipped over (can't wait!) and tiles for the kitchen walls etc. but we're more or less up and running.

To celebrate this soft-launch of the business we're doing a special offer launch box - 4 kinds of British treats for delivery in Japan. Please see the site for more details.

So yes, apologies for the dearth of posts over the past few weeks, it's been a busy and exciting time! There are many posts that I want to write about that process and so I plan to do so retrospectively. I have already learned so many new things through the process of getting ready to open that I am sure it would help other people looking to do something similar. I plan to continue the blog for now as well, I'm sure there is still much to learn and share.

Ah yes, and so this is me (hello!), the face behind the little shop in Tokyo blog:

Stacey