Little Door & Co to open first central London site

The new site, which has benefited from around £1m in capital expenditure, will mark the companies fourth opening, following the Little Blue Door in Fulham, the Little Yellow Door in Notting Hill, and the Little Orange Door in Clapham.

Hazeel said: “Soho, for us, is a prime location we've really wanted to expand into, and the venue we're opening now is an amazing opportunity and a fantastic site.”

Each Little Door site has been crafted around the ideals of British house and dinner parties, without the gimmicks, creating a relaxed, conversational vibe with realistic home-style décor, from ironing boards to shoe racks, around the venues.  

However, the latest site has veered in a slightly different direction, with what Dehdashti described as a more of a “New York industrial finish” while still innkeeping with the company’s ethos.

He said: “If you think about the fact that we all live in many different houses and flats across the world, the possibilities are somewhat endless.

Key challenges 

“With this new site, it's the first time we've kind of veered off actually the traditional British sort of maisonette flats.”

While the company has gone from strength to strength with funding from Edition Cap of £2.2m over the past five years, a predicted £6m turnover and successfully operating and opening new sites during the pandemic, the Little Door & Co, like many other operators, has faced some challenges with the Little Scarlet Door.

Hazeel said: “Construction and materials are much harder to come by, and in some cases, much more expensive than they used to be.

“A lot of our furniture had to be sourced from further afield because it was incredibly difficult to get hold of.

“The cost of sheet metal for constructing the bars is something like 10 times what it used to be a few years ago, so there [were] some surprising and unusual difficulties in terms of physically creating the new venue that have existed directly as a consequence of the pandemic.

“[Also] one of the key challenges at the moment is recruiting staff across our entire company.

Lots of little doors 

“There’s obviously a much-publicised shortage of staff at the moment, but we consider ourselves very fortunate to have been able to come out of the pandemic and have such an exciting opening to look forward to.”

Dehdashti added while the pandemic had caused a lot of difficulty with stop and start trading during lockdowns as well as leaving some operators with massive financial burdens or facing closure, the Little Door & Co had been fortunate to obtain the new site in Soho and noted it may not have been a possibility without the pandemic.

He concluded: “The beautiful thing about house parties and dinner parties is they're not trend reliant.

“There'll be house parties on Mars one day, so we believe we can carry on creating different types of house parties.

“We're very excited about opening lots of doors.”