Cafe on the Green

Cafe on the Green, Allayway avenue, Portsmouth will be opening it's doors on Wednesday 20th August 2025 under new ownership.

Transcript

00:00I'm Kirsty. I'm pretty much from Portsmouth. I've been here most of my life.

00:06I used to manage and work in a lot of pubs and pub kitchens and then spent about eight years

00:13with Virgin Media. Completely different change of approach and then left at the end of last year

00:21and really this is just more about I wanted to have my own business. I wanted to work for myself

00:29and I was looking at various opportunities around the city and this one came up and it just seemed

00:36a perfect fit for me to be honest. I know the area very well. My nan used to live here. I spent a lot

00:42of time here when I was younger and I think the place has great potential. I think it might sound

00:50a bit cheesy but I think a cafe, a good cafe can be a proper hub of a community and I think that

00:56there's such a large residential area here that I'm hoping we can make it work. I really want to

01:04get involved with this local community. I've already reached out to the pantry. I'm going to be

01:10supporting them as much as possible and I just want to help the area. I think that there's a lot of

01:16potential in this area and there's a lot of people around here. Hopefully they like cook breakfasts and

01:24bake them rolls. So I think we just kind of wanted to refresh the place a little bit. So fresh coat of

01:34paint on the walls, a bit of new furniture, the kitchen's been upgraded, the walkway and the toilets

01:42have been upgraded. I've tried to add a lot of plants which you'll probably be able to see around the

01:47place because I think it's just fitting with the area and it's called Cafe on the Green so it made

01:52sense. Menu wise we've tried to keep it fairly straightforward sort of traditional cafe menu. So

02:01cooked breakfast, bacon rolls, omelettes, jacket potatoes, you know, just good wholesome food.

02:09And on that I also have made a pledge that all of our fresh meat is coming from Bransbury Park

02:15butchers. Our eggs are coming from Lycroft Farm which is just in Swanmoor so not far away.

02:22So everything's very localised. Yeah, I'm trying to keep everything as much as I can local so we're

02:30helping to support other local businesses and fresh and hopefully delicious.

02:35Absolutely. And with the locals as well, I mean are they aware of the grand opening tomorrow and what's the response been

02:41like since you announced that you can take it over?

02:43So I think the response has been positive. We're obviously, where we're new, we're trying to build

02:50our social media channels at the moment. We are on Instagram and Facebook so I'm trying to get as much

02:57news as possible out there to say that we're open tomorrow but I'm expecting that when people see

03:04the doors are open, you can smell the food coming out, I think hopefully that will start to spread the

03:09word more as well. So tomorrow is the grand opening. How excited are you about this new venture?

03:16Because you've ran pubs at OriginVegium Media before. This is a completely different era. How does it feel?

03:23Completely different but I think totally transferable skills so I'm excited for sure, very excited.

03:30It's a huge challenge and yeah, I'm just looking forward to hopefully getting a lot of customers through the door.

03:39I'll see you next time.

03:41Bye-bye.

03:42Bye-bye.

03:43Bye-bye.