The Walking Wok, run by Lily Indra, has new home in Elmswell, near Bury St Edmunds, after moving from Ixworth

A catering business started from its proprietor’s home in 2016 has moved to a new industrial unit in Elmswell.

The Walking Wok, which Lily Indra had previously been running from her home in Ixworth, near Bury St Edmunds, now has its own kitted out facility on the Station Road Industrial Estate.

She purchased the unit last year and has now finished the process of moving all her catering equipment to the new business home.

The Walking Wok caters for functions including weddings and corporate business events, as well as doing occasional pop up takeaways and farmers markets.

“So we moved here somewhere in March last year, and then had to renovate and moving everything from my house in Ixworth,” she said. “So we’ve recently put the signs up and so on.

“The Walking Wok serves Asian food, mainly from the South East. When I first started people didn’t have the experience of eating Malaysian food. It’s a way for you to travel with your taste buds.”

When Lily, who is from the east of Malaysia herself, started Walking Wok, she was mainly doing it on weekends to fit around caring for her young children, but the pandemic caused a business boom for her, and now that her children are older she is able to do it full time.

She is proud and grateful of where her business has developed to in recent years, including being asked to cater for events in East Sussex and a wedding in London.

And while the catering aspects will remain at the forefront of her operations, Lily will also be running occasional classes teaching people her style of cooking.

“I am so grateful as it was hard to run it from home,” she said. “I had to divide the time and space between domestic and business, and the house was full of my catering stuff.

“People can come here. There’s more presence and it’s easier to get helpers to come here. It also enables me to play cricket on weekends.”