Today we’d like to introduce you to Kan Sritong and Gail Paiboonvarakit.
Kan and Gail, can you briefly walk us through your story – how you started and how you got to where you are today.
My wife and I have started to work in the restaurant since we were around the age of 17-18. I started out by being a helper in a kitchen, and my wife was a waitress in a fine dining restaurant in downtown, San Diego. A more than a decade of work in the restaurant business, we decided to start something we love to do, a dessert cafe. We used all of our savings to start out our first dessert cafe called Up2you Cafe.
Our first cafe located in the heart of Convoy Street. We have tremendous feedbacks from our customers since we open. After 2 years of our first location, we had decided to expand our business to another location. We opened our second location in 2014, located in Mesa College area. In 2016, we started our first restaurant called Your Story, also in the heart of Convoy. It took us 8-9 months to renovate the place and open up in 2017.
But after about 2 months of opening, we were thinking that the restaurant business was just not for us. So that, we decided to sell the restaurant to our friends, and it is now Cross Street Chicken. Also the same year, we sold both Up2you Cafe’s locations, to start a new business chapter, and it’s called MNGO cafe.
Great, so let’s dig a little deeper into the story – has it been an easy path overall and if not, what were the challenges you’ve had to overcome?
Of course, not a smooth road for us, we started from zero knowledge of being a business owner. My wife is an interior designer, and I am a programmer. So we definitely had to learn so much to get up to this point.
Alright – so let’s talk business. Tell us about MNGO cafe – what should we know?
MNGO cafe is a unique dessert cafe. We put every detail onto decorating out the store. We plate our desserts on a wooden plate, and we add edible flowers on every plate we served.
Is there a characteristic or quality that you feel is essential to success?
We think that doing something out-of-the-box is the most important. We know it is a risk, but at the same time, it’s a good risk.
Contact Info:
- Address: 4176 Convoy St. San Diego, CA 92111
- Website: www.MNGOcafe.com
- Phone: 858-956-5995
- Email: MNGOcafe@gmail.com
- Instagram: http://instagram.com/MNGOcafe
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/MNGOcafe/
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