New year, new location ‘Bliss’ for Dover café

A  café owner has declared a bet on a recovering economy with the launch of a new restaurant Tuesday at Dover, Christ Church in the heart of the island’s south coast hospitality belt.

After five years, family-operated Bliss Café has opened on the site of Luigi’s Italian Restaurant, itself a family business that closed after more than 50 years.

Bliss Café owner Nicola Mohammed told Barbados TODAY that despite the economic adversity she believes that the expansion of the restaurant was needed, and she hoped that the expansion would inspire other Barbadians to consider establishing family-run businesses.

“I think that we don’t know if we are going to be successful and I say that as individuals we don’t know. We’ve got to have faith that we can achieve economic greatness.

She said the decision to open the new restaurant in 2019 arose because they had outgrown their former location.

“We needed to have a bigger location, something where people can have their own tables where each room has different characters to be creative as well. But really, it was about the customers to make sure that we are taking care of our customers in a better way than we have been doing thus far,” she told Barbados TODAY.

“It is a journey. A beautiful journey and a trial at the same time. Because, when you work together every day you are sometimes to tired to sit down and communicate in the way that you would like to. But, I would say that first of all, when we say the word family it is not just the biological family,  our staff as well are a part of our family and I sincerely mean that. Everybody is great I cannot tell you enough, they are phenomenal. In terms of my blood family, my husband is an excellent partner in this business, when we were struggling to open this,  my husband was maintaining the other business down there. My heart also is with my three children who all work here.

Saying that that customer service is paramount at their family-run business Mohammed said that the move to the new location in Dover has gone down well with customers as they have had a steady flow of patrons since they opened at 7:30 a.m.

“ It has been really good. It is nice and steady and I look forward to taking more reservations as well, so that we can be a bit more structured, she told Barbados TODAY.