Remember when times were still ‘precedented’? Remember when Brexit-borne depression and the annual bout of post-Christmas Seasonal Affective Disorder were our major sources of misery? Practically halcyon days when compared to the last six solid months of shitshows that have been forced upon us by a global pandemic coupled with mind numbing government incompetence.
Half a year of learning and understanding more about the novel coronavirus Covid-19 has done little to add any degree of certainty to the UK’s hospitality industry, thrust from one set of restrictions to another, desperately offering takeaway pints one minute, throwing open the doors to millions eager to eat out to help out the next, with barely a second allowed to recover before being floored with a curfew induced gut punch.
It’s been a lot.
So as lockdown 2.0 looms large over Manchester and its spiralling infection rate, how are the city’s independents holding their own?
Just to reiterate…..It’s been a whole fucking lot.
“With every new announcement we have to change what we do again…”
It isn’t often that you have to shut up shop when only three months removed from a deluge of superlatives from Jay Rayner in The Guardian, but that is exactly the stark reality that hit Mary-Ellen McTague in March, when lockdown left her with very little option but to indefinitely close Chorlton favourite The Creameries.
And while huge swathes of the hospitality sector flung open their doors in July, it wasn’t until last month that Mary-Ellen was able to welcome a reduced amount of customers back through the doors of the Wilbraham Road establishment.
“We’ve only just reopened and have been doing 12 covers per service,” explains McTague, a veteran of Heston Blumenthal’s Fat Duck and very recent recipient of the Howard & Ruth Outstanding Achievement Award at this year’s Manchester Food and Drink Festival.
“From next week we’re going to up it to 18 covers but we’ll need an extra member of staff to make that happen. We’ve very slowly been feeling our way along. We knew we weren’t going to do enough business the first two weeks back to make ends meet but we needed to open and to get back up and running.
“With every new announcement we have to change what we do and just roll with the punches.”
So while one of the foremost food writers in the country may have been waxing lyrical about their treacle tart and sauerkraut liquor butter (NOT served together, I hasten to add. Although given McTague’s almost boundless talents in the kitchen, you wouldn’t bet against her making that combination work somehow) in December of last year, The Creameries were, to quote McTague in a Facebook post announcing their closure, ‘financially fucked’ in March, bluntly demonstrating the pandemic’s unflinching, remorseless steamrollering of even the most well respected, successfully operated businesses.
Oh and, y’know, the government, in their infinite fucking wisdom, have hardly made things any easier, implementing their 10pm curfew just as bars, restaurants and pubs across the city were beginning to find their feet again.
“Well that’s just bullshit, isn’t it?” laments McTague, when our conversation turns to the latest disasterclass from Westminster.
“I am 100% behind public safety. I want my customers to be safe, I want my staff to be safe, I want my children to be safe. We do now have additional Covid measures in place, like taking staff temperatures before shifts and extra sanitising, but you should be able to eat your meal off the toilet floor of any well run restaurant anyway. We were already obsessed with cleanliness and hygiene.
“This is why it’s so galling that the hospitality industry is getting it in the neck, because it really doesn’t follow the science regarding infections and where they’re happening. They’re not happening in restaurants and pubs. It’s absolutely crazy. There are no consequences for the government. They aren’t telling businesses to close fully so they don’t have to offer any financial compensation. As far as they’re concerned it’s only an hour, what difference does it make? Well it makes a massive difference to bills, to customer experience, to all sorts of things. It’s really sneaky.
“What’s also hilarious is, because we’ve got a Tory government, none of these ministers have ever worked in a bar to get through uni or anything. No one in the cabinet, unlike pretty much every other member of the population, has ever had a Saturday job or an experience of working in hospitality, because if just one of them had, they would have just gone ‘nah, this is a shit idea’.”
“They are killing the hospitality industry”
McTague’s frustrations have been echoed throughout the hospitality industry and particularly vehemently by Phil Bell, landlord of Northern Quarter bolthole The Ancoats Lad, which recently shuttered after Bell was informed he could host no more than seven customers at a given time.
In a post on the pub’s official Facebook page on 16th September, Bell wrote, “To all our loyal and loving customers, we have decided to close the bar until the mass deception is over. The council are not shutting us down, we have decided to take the lead as they seem to target us. To have a bar and make people stand at the door whilst telling them the rules of the establishment, where to go and sit, what to do when you order a drink, write your name here, and then turn people away because of decisions made in No 10. The new restrictions are the nail in the coffin of reality.
“We will be allowed seven/eight persons in our bar. Plus we have to social distance behind the bar. Can you imagine running a business on that basis? They are killing the hospitality industry, they are crashing the economy.
“We have thought about it, long and hard, what we are to do next, we have had our mind made up for us with the new restrictions. We believe it to be the largest pile of horse manure we have ever seen. Ninety percent of our customers are regulars above the age of 55 and through to 86 only two have had Covid, and that wasn’t serious. We have already received a threat of closure letter hence we cannot take any more stazi visits.
“The Council are blatant liars, I asked them for some help and input because of the size of the bar….they refused.”
Given how perilously close we came to losing venues as sizeable and popular as Gorilla and Deaf Institute during the early days of lockdown, Bell’s words are a chilling indicator of the future for hidden gems and backstreet boozers across Manchester. If sprawling, multi floor venues and mega pubs can barely keep their heads above water, what chance do the dives and subterranean dens of the city have?
“We came out of lockdown as strong as we went into it…”
For every horror story and heartbreaking closure, there are, thankfully, a few saving graces. The success stories that revive the faith that, while everything is far from being alright, manage to keep the apocalypse at the door. At least for the time being.
One such story emanates from Edge Street chicken connoisseurs Yard & Coop, who’s poultry offerings have received far from paltry returns over the last few months, with Eat Out To Help Out driving record business throughout August.
“Eat Out To Help Out was amazing,” revealed owner Carl Morris, when we spoke with him in September, “August broke records for us both against last year and even against Christmas as it drove such large numbers of bookings. It was hard work. But our team did an incredible Job.
“It gave us a much needed injection. We needed it. It gave existing customers a reason to return but also gave new people a reason to try us out.”
As anyone who wandered past Y&C’s corner of NQ in August will attest, Morris is far from being a buttermilk bullshitter when it comes to his review of the scheme. The buzz generated was legit, with socially distanced queues often snaking out of the door. But with Eat Out in the rear view window, what about the future?
“We offer great value anyway so don’t normally discount, but trade is good. We just need to focus on doing what we are good at. Making great buttermilk chicken.
“Our outlook for the future is a bit uncertain, we don’t know about more lockdowns or limits, but right now trade is good. We came out of lockdown as strong as we went into it”.
“We expected the spike to drop but it’s just kept going…”
North of the city centre, Prestwich has long been teeming with a burgeoning independent scene, with new eateries and bars appearing with the regularity of a Tory policy u-turn. In March, the panic, as was the case with all suburban scenes, was that the very heart of the community could be ripped out, with smaller businesses unable to weather the initial covid storm.
Thankfully, mainstays such as Cuckoo, All The Shapes (and their freshly opened The Goods In) and The Church have not only survived, but prospered with various takeaway/delivery systems being put into place while EatNewYork have relocated and rebranded in the area as Triple B (Bagels, Burgers and Beer), with refined Scandi offerings from newly opened Osma, small plates from Paloma and incoming Latin BBQ banquets from Gorge also bolstering the village even further.
But what of independent community co-op Village Greens? Sitting in the shadow of behemoths such as Tesco and ALDI, the village shop with a vibe has proven to be wildly popular since it opened its doors in June 2014. And even with supermarket giants on their doorstep, VG have not slowed down over the last six months, with manager Chris Williams explaining how the only issue they’ve faced since March is keeping up with demand.
“It’s been a rollercoaster ride, but we have traded a lot better. We’ve seen something like a 50% lift in what we would have expected to take. We saw a spike in sales and expected the spike to drop but it’s just kept going.
“As an independent the difficulties have been keeping up with demand. Some of the organic vegetable suppliers were bought out by some of the big supermarkets, so our suppliers had a hard time trying to get stock. It’s turned out to be really good for business but it’s been emotionally draining.
“We were the only place in Prestwich to have certain things at certain times, such as flour and yeast, which as you can imagine were in high demand. A lot of the things there were shortages of, we managed to maintain a supply of them, which was a lot of hard work. But we’ve managed to keep the community in sourdough starter, thankfully.”
Baking supplies and organic produce weren’t the only things being dished out behind the counter of VG, however, with Chris explaining how they’ve served the community in more personal ways.
“Initially we seemed like we were councillors as much as shopkeepers. When lockdown first happened and people started panicking, people would come in and offload, we’re a friendly local shop so people chat to us more than you might find at a big supermarket. Me and a few of my colleagues found that emotionally draining because people were in such mental distress, but we got through it together. I also got out on my little electric bike to deliver veg boxes to those people who were shielding and isolating and we’ve kept up with doing that every Monday and Thursday.
“It’s calmed down over the last couple of months but we’re still better off now than we were before all of this.”
Into the void…
Trying to guess what comes next is, frankly, anybody’s guess. Manchester’s nightlife tsar Sacha Lord continues to appeal to the government about changing their draconian stances regarding nightclubs and the 10pm curfew in general, while the ‘Cancel The Curfew’ campaign continues to gather momentum online, with not just Manchester, but the entire UK’s culture living on the brink of extinction if wiser heads fail to prevail.
Our pubs, bars and restaurants are battered and bruised, some are even tragically out for the count, while the rest brace themselves for further potential knockout blows. But if the last six months has taught us anything, it’s that Manchester’s hospitality scene is coming out swinging for the next few rounds.
So, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off out until 9.59pm…
