Lokal - new place by Press Cafe, Grow with Us!

Hi, I’m Ana and I’m the Founder of LOKAL. I moved to the UK in 2017 from China with my husband, Marin, pregnant with my first child. In China we spent over 10 years working in the corporate world, working ourselves to the bone to build a better life, which is why we took the leap of faith and moved to the UK to start our first business together. Being pregnant, we had to make the decision that family would need to become the number one focus for us, so the business we built needed to support our family based lifestyle.

We saw the opportunity to take over a local coffee shop near where lived and we jumped at the opportunity. This is when Press Cafe was born. We have built Press into a thriving business, with many regular customers visiting us every day. We’re so grateful for the incredible support from the local community. 

In 2022 we put all our spare money into opening a second Press Cafe that we renovated with our own hands. We just didnt have the money to invest in professional help. Today Press Earlsfield is growing every day as we build trust in new customers and community members. 

It has always been my dream to open a full service restaurant, a place where people can come together, celebrate something special, where the community can meet, where mums can have a glass of bubbly before fetching their kids from school, and where friends can have dinner with their family together, without having to drive miles away from home. 

My vision was to open LOKAL, a local wine and dine concept restaurant, open for breakfast, brunch, lunch and dinner where our main market will be our local community, which includes our already trusted customer base. I’m so excited!

Our mission is to operate LOKAL as an environmentally friendly venue that uses locally sourced quality products and supports local businesses by bringing new business to the area. 

When we took over Barmouth Kitchen, it was the perfect location, but the building was in desperate need of repair from plumbing, to electrics, walls, floor and a new ceiling. A full makeover before we could actually build the store inside in order to not only be safe, but be a gorgeous venue. The cost of the rebuild well exceeded our plans and available funding, and we have already invested well over £100,000 into the revival project, but it is not enough to launch a safe venue, which is why we are crowdfunding today.

I hope you will support our mission to build a wonderful venue for everyone!