This 4 July, people around the UK will be celebrating independence on a day specifically created to mark it. No, not that one. Independents Day is organised by the National Skills Academy for Retail, to celebrate the small and the beautiful in the industry.
This is a big deal in Manchester’s Northern Quarter, an area that has become a symbol of the “Original Modern” city’s independent spirit, and is fiercely guarded by those who inhabit it. It has become a hub for locally owned bars, restaurants and shops. You’re never more than 10ft from an earnestly produced latte or an artisan sourdough loaf.
This is hipster town. Nearly everything sold here comes with the word “craft” tacked on the front, and the locals take the indie ethos very, very seriously.
So how will they react to the news that one of its most famous institutions – the Abergeldie cafe, which famously used to have a sandwich board outside proclaiming it as “Terry Wogan’s favourite café” – is about to become … a branch of Subway? Given its 2,139 other outlets, the grab and go sandwich chain hardly stands shoulder to shoulder with independent retail.
There will be protests. There will be tweets. There will be meatball marinara sauce on the carpet before the doors are open.
But should the independent sector really see this as a threat?
Claire Rayner, a national campaigner who launched the Support for Independent Retail campaign in 2011, claims that Subway, as a franchised business, will need just as much support as any new indie would when it opens in the Northern Quarter. “It will still be a small business with an individual putting money on the line, even though it has a big brand umbrella above it,” she points out.
The Northern Quarter, as other independent areas – the Calls in Leeds, Hockley in Nottingham, Shoreditch, Hoxton and Dalston in East London – gets caught in the same commercial cycle. Cheap space attracts small and interesting businesses; interesting becomes popular; popular gets expensive (the average rent per square foot in the Northern Quarter has increased from £7 to £27 in the last decade); expensive can only be afforded by the biggest – and that mostly means chains.
There’s already a Tesco on the edge of the Northern Quarter, which opened several years ago amid a small and fairly muted protest – although it’s always busy. But a month ago, Jamaican-themed bar chain Turtle Bay opened its second Manchester venue on Oldham Street – the epicentre of the city’s independent heart. There were ripples of disapproval, but business owners privately shrugged it off as an inevitable side-effect of the area’s growing popularity, and rubbed their hands at the ever growing footfall that is luring these brands in.
The Northern Quarter has a tourism value to the city these days, so bohemia has to let in the day trippers and their holiday money. Quirky sells. Anyone who has been to Freetown Christiania in Copenhagen will note the immediate barrage of shops and stalls before you even get to see a hippy sleeping in a tree. Growth can be an embarrassing side-effect to the independent spirit of those startups who claim not to have been in it for the money.
The reality in Manchester, as with many other areas, is that many of the “independent” bars in the Northern Quarter actually belong to the same three or four chains. Almost Famous, Home Sweet Home and Liquor & Burn all come from the same stable, and are situated a stone’s throw from each other. Black Dog Ballroom is the cousin of Cane & Grain (over the road); Odd owns the Blue Pig; Kosmonaut and Ply belong to the same folk, and a company called MAD Ltd provides its very own Northern Quarter bar crawl, given that they own Rosylee, The Fitzgerald, Walrus, Tusk and Hula. They’re also planning another three new concepts in the area, including an American diner. Because there’s plenty of life in the old burger yet.
The reaction of one Northern Quarter business owner – who asked not to be named – to the impending arrival of Subway was relatively sanguine. “We’re all in the same game,” he said. “We’re an area that just tends to get on with change and yes, I suppose there are mini-chains already in existence in the Northern Quarter. We all have a vision and if you do things well, growth is inevitable. And don’t tell anyone, but I’m quite partial to a foot-long.”
