Connie Neiman has "lunchbox guilt."
After seeing catering orders for her boxed lunches quadruple from January 2010, the Catonsville resident decided to sell The Lunchbox Café on Sulphur Spring Road in Arbutus and move to a bigger facility on Francis Avenue that can accommodate her booming business.
Since her last day at the location on June 1, which included selling her café to Larry Schwartz, Neiman said she has received emails from upset customers.
"It was a bittersweet decision to sell the café," Neiman said. "I didn't want my customers to think that this was a frivolous move on my part.
"This was a very well-thought out plan to grow the boxed lunch portion of the business."
Her new facility on Francis Avenue will feature a 3,000-square-foot kitchen, triple the size of the one at her old location in downtown Arbutus.
Neiman said re-opening her café is not in her immediate plans.
It would also violate a non-competition agreement with Schwartz, who operates Larry's 1332 where Neiman had her cafe.
The renovations to the Lunchbox Lady's new facility in what used to be a sports apparel company in the lower level of the small shopping center in the 1300 block of Francis Avenue should be completed by the middle of July.
Neiman can't wait.
Two rooms in her home on Morning Walk Drive in Catonsville are filled with chef's jackets, white boards to record orders and other cooking accessories.
While she waited for her new kitchen to open, Neiman has operated at various locations, including the kitchen at the Knights of Columbus hall on 1010 Frederick Road.
Organization is key for Neiman because orders for her lunchboxes, which are filled with specialty sandwiches, unique condiments, a salad and dessert, have grown from 25 per day at the beginning of 2010 to 100 a day.
Her single-day record for most orders assembled is 265.
Asked why her business has exploded, Neiman said with a laugh, "Because our food is good."
Neiman has relied on word of mouth to grow her business and has done little marketing other than attaching a tag with her contact information to each boxed lunch.
Each lunch in a colorful, decorative box filled with tissue paper looks more like a birthday present than a meal.
"When it's complete, it doesn't look like it's been mass-produced," said Neiman, who has seven employees and a fleet of four minivans to deliver orders as far as Westminster. "Ours are made individually."
Neiman said that if an order has six requests for tuna salad sandwiches, each may have a different type of bread.
Neiman utilized that personalized touch at her café as well.
She said that despite her 3-year-old boxed-lunch business' success, she will miss interacting with her café customers.
"I had no intentions of opening a café," she said. "But we soon discovered that that's what the community wanted.
"In hindsight, I'm really glad I opened the café because that introduced me to the neighborhood and it introduced me to people that I actually formed relationships with."
At Lunchbox Café, Neiman would often greet people by name. She said she can still recall where certain customers preferred to sit and how many lemon wedges they liked in their water.
Schwartz said because "she created a relationship in the community," he intends on inviting her to work as a guest chef at Larry's 1332.
Neiman, who said she would love to mingle with her former customers, did extensive interviews with people who wanted to take over her café because she wanted the right person to continue her cafe's legacy.
Now she hopes Schwartz finds the same success in business and relationships that she had.
"Her advice was to be true to myself and do what I believed in," Schwartz said. "And that the community is very welcoming and eager for someone who will give back of themselves."