If you’ve never tried a coxinha, prepare your taste buds for a flavor explosion.
Dracut Economic Development held a ribbon-cutting ceremony on Saturday, February 19, for Mini Bites Factory at 1274 Lakeview Avenue. It’s the fourth Mini Bites in the mini-chain (joining Everett, Framingham and Waterbury, Conn.).
The Dracut location serves as the company’s home base, where all the coxinhas will be prepared, then frozen and sent to the other locations, as well as to parties and special occasions.
For the uninitiated, a coxinha (pronounced co-SHEEN-ya) is a popular Brazilian food consisting of fried dough filled, traditionally, with chicken, although Mini Bites Factory features a variety of fillings, from chicken to four-cheese to sausage to dessert flavors like caramel.
Bruno Almeida, the company’s owner and president, opened his first Mini Bites in 2017 with his business partner, Claudio Sena, and has been waiting a long time to open the Dracut location. He signed the lease at the former home of Dracut Smoke & Vape in July 2020, but ran into some unforeseen problems along the way before finally opening in December 2021.
He’s been waiting so long, in fact, that he’s already planning to open the fifth Mini Bites Factory in Peabody.
“I want to eventually have 10,” Almeida says. “Then I can start to think about franchising. You have to have a strong brand that people can trust.”
Mini Bites Factory’s Dracut location is mainly for pickup and delivery, though there will be a couple of tables inside, while catering occasions both large and small is its main business.