More soup for you! Broth bistro opens on Lambton Quay

Saturday, 31 May 2025

Josh and Lori Jones have opened their first eatery - a Lambton Quay soup bar called Soup District.

A new lunch spot has opened in the capital - and the bowls of hot soup are causing a bit of a stir - as hungry office workers look for something a bit different.

Called Soup District, the small cafe is open 11am to 3pm, Monday to Friday, and sells tomato soup, potato and leek, minestrone, spicy black bean and corn, or broccoli and cheddar, depending on the day.

A cup of soup can be ordered for $10.50 or a bowl for $14, and each dish comes with a choice of blue corn chips, or a white or multigrain bread roll.

The eatery also offers salads, sandwiches and pastries for customers to enjoy - and everything is either vegan or vegetarian, owners Josh and Lori Jones say.

Soup District has been open only for a week on Lambton Quay, but Josh and Lori say the response from Wellington’s lunch time crowd has been heartening.

The pair hail from Colorado in the US and moved to Wellington in 2022. Josh said the move to New Zealand was one the couple had wanted to make for a long time.

The two loved Wellington and were excited to enter its hospitality scene, despite recent reports of industry woes, he said.

“Wellington feels very much to me like a really big, really small, big city. So everything is still accessible. You can traverse the whole thing on foot easily, but you have everything that you could want,” Josh said.

This venture into hospitality is their first, although Josh said the two are experienced business owners, running an escape room business back in the States.

Josh and Lori are vegetarian, so they wanted to provide clean, healthy and affordable kai to locals, Lori said, following the health food movement popular in Colorado.

“In the States, soup and salad places are everywhere all of the time, and there's nothing like that here,” Josh said.

The eatery was also offering a deal where people could buy tomato soup and a cheese toastie for $22, he said.

The recipes were all custom recipes Lori had hammered out and were made with New Zealand ingredients, Josh said.

Josh said there would be more flavours to come, including butternut pumpkin when the vege was available.

“We wanted to start with things that we know people would be really familiar with, but then we have some others that will be a little bit new.”