Downtown bakery opening event space, adding food truck

Koko Tea Salon & Bakery, open for business in downtown Columbus for several months, now is opening to business.

Owner Ava Misseldine took over an 1,800-square-foot space on the ground floor of the revived Seneca Building at 361 E. Broad St. this summer and, with her business feet steady, she’s ready to expand the shop by targeting businesses.

“We’ve been testing things, finding out what people like, what they don’t,” she said.

She sees a few opportunities. In addition to its ground floor, Koko has a 1,200-square-foot mezzanine, to be called the Mezz at Koko, that Misseldine will begin marketing for corporate functions and special events. The event space can accommodate more than 100 guests.

Being a short hop from the Columbus College of Art & Design, she plans to pitch the space for school showings and events.

It also can come in handy for the Gahanna arm of her business. Misseldine, a chemical engineer by trade, launched her first bakery – it was named Sugar Inc. – in 2009 in Dublin before relocating to Gahanna three years later and renaming it Koko in a nod to her Hawaiian roots.

The shop, at 116 Mill St., is in the heart of old Gahanna.

“There, I’m used to being part of the community, to having that connection,” she said. “But that’s harder to do here (downtown), so you have to reach out.”

But the Gahanna shop is in a 115-year-old former house, and while it has a spacious backyard for entertaining, she has been limited on the events she can host.

“We can bring some events from there to here,” she said of the Columbus site.

In another play for the business trade, Koko will make a greater push for boxed lunch catering sales from downtown.

Expected to help is the addition of a food truck.

“Before I moved to Gahanna, I had a food truck,” Misseldine said. “I miss it.”

Though it will be driving around, serving up cupcakes, bubble teas, baked goods and coffee, the later supplied by her brother’s coffee plantation in Hawaii, Misseldine sees it more as a marketing tool than a sales vehicle.

“We want to let people know we’re here,” she said. “We want that driving around town, advertising us.”

Misseldine jumped at the chance to expand the bakery to a second site when her broker, Bryan Savage of Savage Real Estate, showed her the space. “It’s a beautiful space with great bones. I see the potential here,” she said.

The site also afforded her a larger kitchen that enables Misseldine to expand her baked goods offerings and should be a boost to her catering business.

“We can do things here that we just couldn’t do in Gahanna,” she said. “I want to make more French pastries, eclairs.”

In its opening months, Koko expanded its menu to include more wraps to play for a lunch time crowd.

“We came to the conclusion that we need to do what we do best, what’s unique to us – and that’s baked goods,” she said. “We make good wraps, but we’re not a deli. So we’ll be doing more hand pies, quiche, salads, some more healthy options.”

Koko is a weekday business, but Misseldine plans to launch weekend hours soon that will feature brunch and a high tea.

“I’ve always wanted to host high teas, but there isn’t enough space in Gahanna,” she said.

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