The Cloakroom café Northenden

Aim

To convert a derelict ex-council loo into a Coffee House, serving Vegan/Vegetarian local produce, whilst caring for the environment.

Hi, my name’s John and I’m the owner of -The Cloakroom Café here in Northenden, South Manchester, England. I was brought up in Manchester and haven’t ever felt the need to move away from the city I love dearly. I have always run pubs in Manchester and some of you will know that I own the Crown Inn which is also in Northenden.

I am going to convert the derelict council owned toilets on Mill Lane in Northenden into a lovely coffee house-café, the building is adjacent a busy car park and the Riverside kiddies park is a few meters away. The River Mersey flows close by and is a great draw for dog walkers, ramblers, and cyclists.  The toilet is set in a beautiful conservation area, unfortunately it has looked very disheveled for many years, and I think it is time to bring the building back to life with a new and exciting purpose.

We will sell quality local plant-based products, even growing some of our own herb’s fruits and vegetables on the site where possible. Our Tea and Coffee will be locally blended and ethically sourced. We will sell fresh sandwiches, cakes, ice cream, cold drinks, crisps, and snacks.

We can achieve all of this, but first we need to "build it and they will come" said Kevin Costner, we have applied to Manchester City Council for a change of use and planning permission to make alterations to the building. The interior of the toilet is still exactly as it was when it was closed over ten years ago, so there will be a lot of demolition work to do before we can start to build our dream. We've already cleared the ground outside and it looks fabulous, but there is so much more to do. The leaking roof and guttering will need to be repaired, the interior cubical walls will be dismantled, and a new disabled toilet built. All the electrics and plumbing will be renewed, new doors and windows will be fitted and then we will need to install lots of new equipment.

This project matters to us because Northenden is our home and we love it, we want to make a difference here rather than travel to other areas to set up shop, we will hardly even register our carbon footprint walking from our house to work each day. We are passionate about food and drink; we want others to experience our passion too. Bringing a disused, abandoned building back to life and then using it to bring joy and excitement through food quality and provenance is our dream, but just as importantly is the way we will do it,  we will focus on not harming our environment by using of low energy equipment and lighting, zero waste, recycling and reusing. 

Northenden, although punching well above its weight these days with many award-winning eateries lacks a vegetarian and vegan offer in the true sense of the word, most cafés and restaurants in the area do now cater for non-meat eaters but the choice is still limited, and we think there is a gap in the market which should be filled. 

We started asking the local council to let us use the toilet block two and a half years ago but as we all now know COVID 19 got in the way and the project was stalled, now we are once again firmly committed to opening our dream café but the cash we had put aside needed to be used in other parts of the business, so to make sure that the Crown Inn did not fail during the pandemic, we used a lot of the money we’d saved for the café to sure up our beloved community pub and make sure it was there when the crisis was over and not to let it go the same way so many other pubs went during that time.

Those of you who know me from the Crown will know that if I can’t afford something, I will work harder for it and wait until I have the money rather than go into debt for it, so asking for financial help is so very difficult and to be honest scary, I really do appreciate your support for this project.

We now need money to furnish the café, we need a cooker, freezers, fridges, work surfaces, a coffee machine and all the other appliances that go into building a professional kitchen. We have also promised to reopen one of the toilets to service the local community that use the river every day, we felt this was vital as the area does not have any facilities nearby, this will also need to be funded as we do not intend to ask for any payment to use the loo.

This project closed unsuccessfully on 15th July 2022