FOR most new business owners, getting through that tricky first year relatively unscathed is the aim of the game — but not for University pals Asif Timol and Salman Bariwala.

They set up their first coffee shop and dessert parlour a year ago and are about to open up on a second site.

The pals, who met at Liverpool University, opened up the Room Four Dessert business in Deane Road in December 2013, serving coffee, cream cakes, milk shakes, waffles and ice cream to the people of Bolton.

It was their first venture into the food and drink market, but after a very successful first year, they decided the time was right to grow and will open their second site inside the newly refurbished All Souls Church in Charlotte Street at the start of next month.

Mr Timol, aged 36, who is still a practising solicitor, said: “The response we have had since launching Room Four has totally overwhelmed us.

“It was always our dream to have a little coffee shop and we imagined there would be a regular trickle of people coming in and we would have been happy with that.

“But there have been many occasions where we have had people queuing out of the shop and we have had to bring in double and sometimes triple the amount of staff we had predicted — it has been amazing.”

He said the opportunity to move into the Grade II listed Victorian church which has now re-opened after a £4.9 million transformation, was too good to miss.

He said: “The renovations inside are absolutely stunning and we just thought this was an opportunity to set up in the heart of a community that we wanted to take.”

The entrepreneur said that despite their remarkable success, he and his business partner are their own biggest critics and are always keen to improve in every way possible — including enrolling their staff on college courses in customer service.

He added: “We are still far away from where we want to be and want to get better all the time — I think even if everything was perfect we would still want more. I think that is important.”

He is also happy to admit that it is his wife Zainab, an optician, who is the creative force behind the venture’s success.

He said: “The whole thing started because my wife made a dessert table for a wedding and she suddenly started getting lots of enquiries.

“She is still at the heart of everything we do.”

Mr Timol will be speaking about his start-up story at an event organised by Bolton Council for aspiring entrepreneurs at the High Street Library on Thursday (January 29) from 6pm. Anyone interested in attending should call 01204 332853.