The owners of a popular European-style cafe in the Southridge area of Kennewick are expanding to a bigger location a half mile away.

Café Magnolia, currently located in the Cynergy Center at 4309 W. 27th Place, Kennewick, attracts visitors from Portland traveling on Highway 395, while regular customers drive from Spokane, Walla Walla, Sunnyside, Prosser and even Seattle to get their fill of coffee, pastries and lunch items. 

With only 55 seats, the cafe quickly runs out of seating on its busiest days, Fridays, Saturdays and especially Sundays, said Nena Langford, who owns the cafe along with her husband Chad. The cafe also has struggled with kitchen space, especially when catering for events, Langford said. 

She said business has grown by 400% since the cafe first opened, driving the expansion. 

Now, Langford and Café Magnolia’s customers are excited for the mid-November move to a new space that will better accommodate catering and events, as well as more seating for everyday customers.

Expansion plans

Café Magnolia, which first opened in its current space in 2022, will move to the commercial suites at The Falls apartment community at 4112 W. 24th Ave., Suite A174. Other tenants of The Falls are Smooth N Slice and Sifithu Pizza & Bar. 

Langford said she wanted the cafe to remain in the Southridge area. 

“We get so much support here,” she said, saying she loved the area and saw no reason to go elsewhere. 

At about 5,000 square feet, the new cafe is about two and a half times larger than the Cynergy Center space. Langford said that it will have 95 seats inside, plus 65 on an outdoor patio.

The kitchen is located one suite over, connected by a pergola, and its expanded size means an expanded menu for the cafe as well.  

Currently, the cafe’s top menu item is avocado toast, Langford said, though customers can buy anything from a cup of coffee and a small pastry to a full brunch or lunch. “That has been a big draw for us,” she said, capturing a large demographic. 

To support the larger space and kitchen, Café Magnolia has already bulked up its staff to 22 people, all fully trained and at work in the current space. 

Challenges

The business first announced its move and expansion via social media more than a year ago, but the process hasn’t been an easy one. 

Langford described it as “painful, long, expensive, a lot harder than we anticipated. But we’re very, very, extremely pleased with the final result.”

One of the most challenging aspects has been securing the financing, Langford said. She signed the lease a year ago, and it’s been difficult to support the leases for both spaces with only the income from the smaller space. And she’s had to outfit the new space as well.

Both Langford and her husband have been heavily involved in getting the new space set up, from coming over two to three times a day to coordinating everything to designing parts of the new cafe space. 

The couple designed the new space’s long, wood-topped counter, fireplace mantle and more, ensuring that details from the current cafe space are featured in the new one, like the chandeliers and blue-and-yellow patterned floor tiles. 

Their lease in the new location is for seven years. Their current lease is up at the end of November, though Langford said she hopes to be out sooner than that. 

Hosting events

Langford said she is looking forward to spending less time emailing about construction decisions, instead working on catering and hosting bigger events once the new cafe opens. She anticipates different types of community events throughout the year, like music on the patio, family events with games, farmers markets on the weekends and lots of tea parties. 

All will be ticketed events, she said. 

The cafe’s hours will be slightly reduced after making the move, closing up at 4 p.m. instead of 5 p.m. to give the team time to prepare for private events that are hosted in the evening. The cafe will be open 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Saturday and 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Sundays. 

Already, the cafe is almost completely booked up for November and December, she said. 

An exclusive cocktail reception with Julia Quinn, the author of the “Bridgerton” series, was set to be hosted Nov. 12 at Café Magnolia’s new space ahead of a Mid-Columbia Libraries’ author presentation later that evening. 

The cafe also has hosted other events in the past, from tea parties to bridal showers to salsa dance nights. 

Customers have been excited about the upcoming changes so far, Langford said, and some have been peeking in the windows of the new space or asking about when the move will happen. 

“We have no doubt that we’re going to be extremely busy and that the crowd will support on the weekends,” she said. 

Café Magnolia: 4112 W. 24th Ave., Suite A174, Kennewick, 509-619-0605, Facebook.