Retail & Pop Up Restaurants
POPPING UP!
Capital Cuisine have been at the cutting edge of pop-up restaurants for some 13 odd years, even before ‘pop-ups’ were thought of and someone made them trendy!
A brief potted history! - Colin with Capital Cuisine has been successful since 2004 with its tender to operate the main catering franchise within the National Eisteddfod, which included the original pop-up Blas and more recently the newly designed PL@IAD restaurant. Working hand in hand with the Welsh Assembly Capital Cuisine were the chosen partner of WAG in rolling out the BLAS concept at key consumer facing events, in particular the Hay on Wye Festival 2003 - 2008, The Royal Welsh Show 2003, 2004 and 2005 and the Ladies European Open Golf Championships at Royal Porthcawl 2003, which saw the launch by Colin Gray and WAG of the exciting new BLAS TO GO concept. New events added to the already successful BLAS format in 2006 were the RHS Spring Flower Show in Cardiff (repeated in 2007, 2008 and 2009) and the Welsh Open Golf Championship, Celtic Manor, Newport. New events included a new standalone restaurant at the Hay Festival, a bar and restaurant at the Brecon Jazz festival and two restaurants a food to go operation and bar at the Royal Welsh show, the Urdd Eisteddfod 2007/8/11 and 7 weeks at Cardiff’s Winter Wonderland at Cardiff’s Ice Rink 2011 and 2012.
And now! - We have been putting a huge sit down restaurant at the Hay festival for all this time and it goes from strength to strength each year, quickly followed was the main and only sit down restaurant at the National Eisteddfod, where we now have some 300 seats plus a coffee shop and 100 seat function room – all of this in massive marquees in a field complete with fully functioning kitchen marquee with cookers, refrigerated storage and even dishwashers! A spell at the Royal Welsh Show for the last 4 years has also seen us ‘popping up’ in Builth Wells with similar restaurants. We pride ourselves on being the leading player in this field (excuse the pun!) and are always looking for new opportunities to showcase Welsh produce to the wider foodie audience, so if you are looking to upgrade your catering offer please get in touch to discuss your event or fixed venue in more detail.
Some of our pop up brands include – Pl@iad and Pl@iad y Fynd (National Eisteddfod), Graze (Hay festival), The Harrow and the Trade and members bar (Royal Welsh Show).
RETAIL
Our retail roots go way back to when Colin started the infamous Barons Patisserie which some may remember ‘THE cake shop’ in Oxford arcade, Cardiff, which was a very French affair! We eventually sold out to Madisons coffee, who went on with our help to have 44 coffee shops and a number of restaurants, where Colin was responsible for much of the food offer, a great deal of it made and shipped from our base in Tyndal Street, Cardiff at the time.
More recently and in conjunction with Nia Evans, we have together created Caffi Bodlon in Whitchurch, Cardiff. Caffi Bodlon is a unique coffee shop and gift shop combining the superb taste of Nia at Bodlon with a great food and drink offer inspired by Colin. Nia has been successful with Bodlon on-line www.bodlon.com and with a couple of pop-up shops for a number of years but this is the first bricks and mortar venture, which is proving very successful in the area, so much so that we are looking for other sites! So why not pop in for a coffee and do some shopping whilst you are there, there is a small deli section too selling all the things we love and very many Welsh products. If you spot a site that may fit the bill why not get in touch, we may pop-up near you some time in the future – don’t mention it to Costa though!
