Speeding up sandwich service: Mondo Sando founders on their new takeaway-focused site

South East London’s cult sandwich brand Mondo Sando has opened a new takeaway‑focused venture, MONDO TO GO, in Deptford. The site offers the brand’s signature sandwiches alongside Deptford‑exclusive creations and a range of drinks from pints to slushies.

The launch represents founders Jack Macrae and Viggo Blegvad’s first concept designed primarily for speed and grab‑and‑go service, expanding the brand’s footprint beyond its existing site Cafe Mondo and permanent kitchen at The Grove House Tavern.

Started in 2020, the duo were inspired by the rise of sandwich culture, initially making sandwiches in a home kitchen before securing a pub residency. At MONDO TO GO, they have focused on speed, high turnover, and compact operations, while retaining the creativity and quality that have defined the brand from the start.

What made you want to open a grab-and-go concept?

Viggo Blegvad: I guess the café was already halfway there. At lunchtime, everything is geared towards takeaway - our food is packaged to go, and while people can stay and dine in, the service is really built around speed and flexibility. This was about amplifying that side of the business - creating a space designed specifically to do what we were already doing but faster and at a higher volume. That’s increasingly important now.

Jack Macrae: It was also driven by the site itself. We really wanted to open in Deptford - we love the area - and had been looking at spaces for years. These railway arches kept coming up, and when we looked seriously, we had to ask: how can we make this work in a much smaller space? That naturally led us to a more compact, grab-and-go concept.

What are the key creative differences between this site and your other concepts?

VB: The pub is where we started, and it serves classic pub food like burgers and sides – typical ‘drinking food’. The café is our most flexible site: we serve dinner three nights a week with a drinks and cocktail menu, while lunch blends the sit-down style of dinner with more casual, packaged-to-go options. This new site is much more focused - like what the café does at lunch but taken further. It’s about high turnover, energy, and a buzzy takeaway atmosphere.

What have been the key challenges in shifting to a faster, grab-and-go model?

JM: The biggest challenge has been space. We’re trying to do almost everything we do at the café, but in a much smaller kitchen. That means carefully planning every detail - what equipment we can fit, how we lay it out, even measuring appliances to the centimetre.

How do you maintain quality while increasing speed?

VB: The smaller space actually plays a positive role in this: the chef can make more sandwiches faster without having to move around too much.

JM: It’s all about systems and training. Speed doesn’t have to come at the expense of quality - it’s about how you build the operation. In some ways, being busy helps. When you’re making more food more consistently, you can achieve greater consistency. You also tend to have fewer people producing higher volumes, which helps maintain standards.

What Deptford exclusives can customers expect?

JM: We’re very lucky to have our first-ever hire, Oscar Roche-Whitechurch, as our kitchen manager at Deptford, and he’s developed a special sandwich for the opening - the Szechuan beef dip sandwich with rare roast beef and slow-roasted beef shin, onions, mala Szechuan spice, pickled mustard stem, cheese and aioli.

Why did you choose Deptford?

VB: Our first sites were in Camberwell, where we both lived when we started, and now I’ve spent about four years in Deptford, so we’ve really got to know the area. We love the high street, the community, and the atmosphere. The arches have always been on our radar, and it felt like the right fit. We also like smaller, ‘hole-in-the-wall’ venues where you can outperform the space. Opening a business is a big commitment - you need to feel comfortable in the area and be happy spending a lot of time there. It’s also about being part of a community. Seeing regulars and building relationships is one of the most rewarding parts of what we do.

How do you develop new sandwiches?

VB: There is a clear difference between specials and the core menu. Specials are more open and experimental, but permanent dishes have to work operationally, consistently and financially. We’ve also shifted towards reworking familiar sandwiches - things like a cold cuts combo or a Caesar - so first-time customers have recognisable options alongside more creative ones.

JM: For the best part of a year, we ran other people’s specials who had bought the ‘You make the sandwich if you’re so smart’ kickstarter rewards, working with people to develop a sandwich dedicated to them for a month. It brought in fresh ideas and led to creations we wouldn’t have come up with ourselves. Now our teams play a big role in specials too, which we’re really proud of.

Are there any ingredients or ideas you’re excited about right now?

VB: We’re really excited about breakfast - all the flavours of breakfast. We’ve always wanted to do it at the café, but it was too busy to make it work. Now we’ve found the right time and space, and in the next few months we hope to launch a small, focused breakfast menu.

Is MONDO TO GO a concept you’d like to scale?

JM: Potentially, yes - if it works. This is a bit of a test case for whether the model is scalable. But it is scary and we don’t want to lose that local connection. Expanding beyond areas we know well is challenging, both operationally and personally.

Would you ever consider expanding beyond London?

JM: Maybe - places like Bristol or Margate could work. But it’s not straightforward. It seems like an even tougher industry outside of London, so it’s a question of whether it would work further afield.

VB: There are also logistical constraints - our systems rely on being close to suppliers and prep kitchens. Expanding further would mean rethinking that entire structure.