Kids are hanging out at the Café Fresco in Toul Kork. Every Saturday, children have been showing up in droves to enjoy the new eatery's weekend activities for kids.
The event unfolds every Saturday from 4-8 pm at the Sunway City Toul Kork Café Fresco. It began March 10, shortly after the new Café Fresco opened its doors.
The aim is to expose the new Café Fresco location to families who live in the area as well as residents who live elsewhere in Phnom Penh, says Leng Chantha, sales manager for the FCC Group, which owns the three Café Frescos in Phnom Penh.
Event organizers have been offering different events every weekend, and so far the event has proven quite popular.
"We have been very successful for last three weekends as there have been lots of kids and parents who participated," Leng Chantha said in late March.
The first Café Fresco opened below the FCC at its riverside location in November 2003 after former FCC director of operations and shareholder Anthony Anderson secured some space for the new coffee shop and eatery.
"It was a travel agency office before," recalls Chan Thy, an FCC restaurant manager who began working for the FCC when it opened in 1993.
The idea to establish a Café Fresco stemmed from a desire by the FCC shareholders to expand their operations, he points out.
The Riverside Café Fresco attracts lots of tourists and expats, and companies and NGOs that get take-away orders for staff members, Chan Thy says. And some Cambodians also frequent the establishment.
"Some Cambodians go overseas to study and when they come back to come to Café Fresco," he says.
The success of the Riverside establishment prompted the development of another Café Fresco, which opened in Boeung Keng Kang 1 in March 2008.
That location attracts lots of ex-pats and NGO workers, that latter of which are both foreign and Cambodian. "Some Cambodian people working for NGOs are always looking for a place to have coffee," says Chan Thy.
Things are looking good for the new Café Fresco in Toul Kork, which has been attracting a growing number of expats who live in the area and some middle class Cambodians, says Chan Thy, who had studied chemistry and was planning to become a teacher before arriving at the FCC two decades ago to help with matters concerning accounting and human resources for the new establishment.
Both the Café Fresco outlets and the FCC serve the same coffee and baked goods, he says.
"We have a bakery that supplied all the Café Fresco outlets and also the FCC," Chan Thy adds.