Having done that, his attention is turning to the South Island.
In October last year, Mr Kim and his partner, Joo, started crepe store Jooni’s, in George St.
Last Thursday, they opened a second store in the Wall Street mall.
The couple moved back to Dunedin after last year’s Covid-19 lockdown, after Ms Kim lost her job as a flight attendant at Air New Zealand and Mr Kim’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer.
Their first store became very popular with George St shoppers, selling as many as 250 crepes a day.
Its popularity made the couple decide to open a second premises
and they settled on the Wall Street mall.
Renovations in the mall and August’s Covid-19 lockdown meant the new store’s opening was delayed about a month. Doing that going into a lockdown was ‘‘very tough’’, Mr Kim said.
‘‘It is all the uncertainty that goes with it because nobody really knows what is going to happen next but that is just the nature of things at the moment.’’
The past 12 months had been hectic as Ms Kim was called back to Air New Zealand, based out of Christchurch, when the transtasman bubble first opened.
That left Mr Kim to manage Jooni’s by himself, as well as his other job managing Dunedin restaurant, Kenko.
Ms Kim was still flying domestic routes and Jooni’s eight staff had helped manage the workload, Mr Kim said.
‘‘They have been awesome, we couldn’t have done it without them.’’
Mr Kim had plans to expand Jooni’s into Christchurch, he said.
