Pay now, eat later at new Noshery

Noshery hopes to move to a bigger location, but is having trouble raising money.

An eatery near Main Campus is serving customers sandwiches, soda and chances to invest in its future.
Juno Park, owner of Noshery Gourmet Café, located at 1600 N. Broad St., plans to move to a bigger location but is having trouble securing loans and traditional investors.

To counter the problem, Park developed a fundraising campaign involving customer investment.
Customers receive $40 certificates redeemable at Noshery’s new location and a $5 coupon to use immediately for investing $20 in the café.

The eatery will also hold a raffle on the opening day of the new location, where one investor will win a 2009 Honda Metropolitan Scooter.

Noshery is relocating to Broad and Oxford streets to expand its size from 1,400 square feet to 10,000 square feet.

“It’s a win-win situation for me and the investors,” Park said. “Forty-five dollars is about a break-even point for me, and it’s more important to get the restaurant open than to look at immediate profit margin.”

The campaign will stop running after Park obtains enough money to qualify for financing.

Noshery at the Shops at Avenue North is often filled with customers and smoke from the panini machines (Katherine Briggs/TTN).

“We’re getting a pretty good response,” Park said, “but we haven’t gotten all the money we need yet. After six months of operation here, we found out the store was too small to meet the demand,” Park said. “Because of the limitations, we have a low allowance rate of profit.”

Temple student Erin Magnus is considering taking advantage of the fundraising campaign.

“I come here a lot and that would save me money,” the junior kinesiology major said.

Some students do not want to invest money in funding the café’s relocation.

“I’m not interested because I don’t have the money to put into it,” said Liz Roper, a sophomore photojournalism major.

“I’d rather keep my $20,” said Charley Lestrange, an undeclared sophomore.

Construction has yet to begin at the new location, but a contract and a conceptual model have been developed. The new restaurant will have two floors to accommodate a large kitchen, a customer queue area, a café-style dining area and a dessert bar.

“Separating the kitchen and dining area will allow for a more casual setting and a better environment to dine,” Park said. “It’s kind of chaotic here now.”

Relocating to a larger space will fix a major problem that has affected customers at the restaurant’s current location.

Additional ventilation outlets will help to eliminate smoke that comes from the panini makers and often fills the dining area, leaving customers smelling of smoke.

The new location also includes a rooftop deck that will be open during warm-weather months for dining and special catering events.

Noshery’s expansion means a menu with more selections and a new name, Grub Hub.

“We’re happy to get a bigger place and are excited for a bigger kitchen,” said Goenawan Liao, a chef at Noshery who plans to follow Park to the Grub Hub. “The kitchen here is too small for us.”

With the addition of the larger kitchen, the menu will include original sandwiches, salads and sushi currently being served at Noshery, along with new dishes such as brick oven pizza, charcoal-grilled burgers, cheesesteaks, Korean dishes and a dessert bar containing frozen yogurt and pastries.

“The basic concept of the Grub Hub is to have a miniaturized food court where we can serve a limited selection of a variety of genres,” Park said. “This will help us make higher quality food at the same time as expanding variety.”

Park is striving to open the Grub Hub by the end of this year but if not, expects it to open by early next year. Noshery will remain open for about a month after the opening of the Grub Hub in order to make sure all the customers know where the new location is.

With the closing of the current location, the majority of the employees will move to the Grub Hub.
“I have a good boss, and I’m just happy here,” Liao said. “I enjoy the job.”

Grace Dickinson can be reached at grace.dickinson@temple.edu.

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