Sasha and Kenya, founders of Seven

Seven is an all-day café & eatery. In our beautiful and welcoming space, we serve homemade, seasonal food for breakfast and lunch, alongside specialty coffee and other drinks. We pride ourselves on using high-quality ingredients that we source from local and sustainable suppliers.

We are childhood friends and both ended up working for our respective family businesses. Sasha in the restaurant industry and Kenya in the field of design & architecture. 

We shared the ambition of wanting to be independent and to create something entirely new by ourselves, outside of our respective family businesses, but we’re both unsure of exactly what. 

Having both studied abroad and travelled the world quite extensively, we also realised the extent to which such spaces were missing in Brussels. 

But the idea for the project really came to life when our boyfriends, who are also best friends and business partners expanded their business (ANIMO Studios, a boutique fitness brand) to a new location. There just to happened to be a free space next to their new location and we took this a sign - we needed to open an all day café/restaurant just next door and benefit from the complementary of our two businesses).

Everything fell into place quite naturally, as we are quite complementary given our past professional experiences. 

With her experience in the restaurant space, Sasha took the lead on the conceptualisation and development of our menu, recipes, etc… (today, our chef @fitfoodness helps us in this regard). 

Kenya’s past experience in communications & PR led her to take the lead on a things branding, marketing, and the design of the space. 

But although we fully trust each other in our respective “fields”, all important decisions are always taken together.

Acai bowl, no doubt about it!

1. Always stay authentic and focus on building the best business you possibly can, rather than generating content. Right from the the start, we never invited any influencers or paid anyone to generate content for us. It came naturally and authentically and it’s so much more powerful that way. 

2. Share your values and the quality of your products. We focus on sharing the high-quality ingredients we use as well as the artisans and suppliers we used to build our beautiful space.

3. The space is very “instagramable”. Like it or not, it’s essential these days. It helped us attract an influential crowd which in turn attracted many more people.

Kenya is constantly wearing the prime ring on her pinky as well as two semi hoop earrings. She also has her eyes on the juno ring right now. 

Sasha wears the silo earring

London: Granger & co / Jolene / 26 grains 

Paris: Gramme

Not really ! Kenya studied fashion and wanted to be a buyer. At the time, Sasha’s siblings were working in the family business and it seemed natural that she would join them, and she never really questioned that.

However, we both always wanted to create something and to feel accomplished and independent. Both of us also ended up in a relationship with entrepreneurs, which gave use even more drive to build something of our own.