Mrs Sourdough Bakery expands to Rochester High Street in 2026

A queue-driven bakery business is about to go far more visible. Mrs Sourdough Bakery will open a second shop on Rochester High Street in June 2026, opposite Café Lounge, after owner Katalin Takacs saw enough local appetite to push beyond the original Chatham base and into one of Kent’s busiest streets.

Takacs, who is 44 and Hungarian-born, built Mrs Sourdough from her kitchen during lockdown before growing it into a bakery-and-cafe operation. The move into Rochester is not a straight copy of the Chatham shop. Bread and pastries for the new site will still be made at the existing Chatham premises and delivered across Medway, while the Rochester staff will focus on sandwiches and lighter dishes. That split keeps production centralized, preserves the sourdough work that customers already know the brand for, and gives the new high-street location a broader daytime menu.

The reaction around the site has been immediate. Takacs said, “A lot of people are waiting already,” and builders had to cover the shop window because passersby kept stopping to ask what was going in. That kind of curiosity is the clearest demand signal in the story: Mrs Sourdough is not opening into a blank market, but into a town centre where the name is already drawing attention before the doors open.

The second shop arrives alongside a major refresh in Chatham, where the business is spending about £35,000 on a refurbishment. Takacs is turning what she described as a dark, unwelcoming space into a brighter shopfront where customers can see into the kitchen. Mrs Sourdough Bakery Ltd was incorporated on 21 October 2021, with Takacs listed as the active director, and the Chatham address remains 74 High Street, ME4 4DS.

The brand’s own site already points to why the expansion has room to work. Mrs Sourdough describes itself as a bakery, patisserie and coffee shop, with fresh sourdough loaves baked daily in Chatham, plus cakes, savoury treats, lunches and coffee. It also supplies wholesale customers in Kent and London, which shows the business has already built demand beyond a single neighbourhood counter. Takacs is now recruiting full-time staff to support the Rochester opening, and the plan is to trade seven days a week from 7 a.m. to 5 p.m.

Rochester gives the expansion the right backdrop. Medway Council calls it the historic heart of Medway, lined with traditional, boutique and specialist shops, while wider Rochester Riverside regeneration is set to add homes, retail and leisure space and improve links to the High Street. In a corridor Historic England says has moved through medieval, industrial, flourishing, decline and regeneration phases, Mrs Sourdough is stepping into the next one with a business model built for visible footfall and steady sourdough demand.