'Rock and hard place' - We're fighting for the future of one of Manchester's most unique venues

The pub was recently forced to close its kitchen and make three members of staff redundant in an attempt to cut running costs. And now the venue has announced a fundraiser festival over the August Bank Holiday weekend, which the team hope will help secure at least £15,000 to transform the pub in a way that will ensure its future as a community space.

Located in the most unlikely of spots, a science park in Moss Side, it is the last holdout of the former Greenheys estate, which was flattened as part of the slum clearances of the sixties. These days, however, it is much more than just a local boozer. 

By night, it is a popular party venue that packs in diverse crowds and towering soundsystems. By day, it is an important social enterprise hub, with events and initiatives aimed at helping local communities.

“We have no ‘type’”

“When you say community here, there's so many different communities within this space,” operations director Frankie Coker told Manchester World. “The bouncers laugh at me sometimes because they're like: You've got no 'type'.

“We try to create different hubs for different communities, but because there's no direct housing around us in the science park, we don't have a community. We try and offer the space for other communities. You can get a different thing at any time of the day. And it's a really interesting space for that. ”

For example, Frankie’s Thursdays often involve helping out with the pensioners’ tea morning –‘the elders,’ as he respectfully calls them – at 11am, and then welcoming in the drum and bass crowd 12 hours later for a regular event aimed at encouraging more female DJs and promoters into the genre.

Elsewhere, it’s known in reggae circles for its monthly Pub Dub nights. And since lockdown, it has been running its TV Dinner initiative, where the pub’s kitchen makes ready meals for families in the local Moss Side area. It also hosts Breaking Barz, a hip-hop event in memory of boxer and activist Len Johnson who, in 1953 was refused a drink at the Old Abbey Taphouse because he was black. This led to protests and an eventual lift of the ‘coloured bar’ nationwide. These are just a few of the communities that call the Old Abbey home. 

“Between a rock and a hard place”

Frankie, 34, has been running events and working in hospitality since he was a teenager but joined the Old Abbey Taphouse team just before coronavirus hit. At the time, they were just starting on their journey of turning the pub into a fully-fledged social enterprise, but the pandemic forced them to focus on survival instead. 

Despite the upheaval, the Old Abbey had a profitable first year of the pandemic and they were able to make some headway with their community projects, launching their TV Dinners initiative. But as things started to recover, the cost of living crisis kicked in and over the last four years the pub has been running at £30,000 losses annually. Footfall is still high at the Old Abbey, but turnover isn’t and Frankie sees this as a sign of how spending habits have changed. 

Frankie said: “This is the same for any hospitality business really that's been around as long as us. We all thought this year would be a lot more profitable and we thought: We're out of Covid and the cost of living will change. This year has probably been our lowest year for turnover ever. I think that people have got used to the fact that their costs are a lot higher, so spending patterns of people have changed. Cost of living is here to stay.”

But this everyday hardship that many people in Manchester today are facing today is precisely why the Old Abbey Taphouse wants to strengthen its status as a community hub.

Frankie explained: “We see ourselves as a community pub and the reality is most of the community that are surrounding us don't really have enough money to come to the pub, so we interact with them through community days or feasts, or our TV Dinners project. We sometimes do 'pay as you feel' meals. But to support all that, we need to run events out of the venue. So by losing our kitchen, we were always worried that we would become a nightclub space, more than a community pub.

“There are loads of things that we wish we could do in the space, but, essentially, we're between a rock and a hard place because we try to be a pub, a music venue and a social enterprise with charitable aims. And all three of those sectors are in freefall at the moment.”

Frankie and his team were close to realising these plans to transform the Old Abbey thanks to a substantial grant they had received via a charity to redevelop the kitchen area – which actually has the same amount of floor space as the pub. However, they made the decision to decline the funding when they learned that the money was coming from Barclays bank, which pro-Palestine activists claim has financial interests in the Israeli arms trade. This is an issue both Frankie and many of the pub’s customers feel strongly about. 

He said: “We have loads of fundraisers that are all independently put on by our customers. We just knew that we couldn't take money off Barclays.”

“First step in the ladder”

Frankie said that everyone at the Old Abbey Taphouse felt “away at sea” for a while in the run up to making the difficult decision to close the kitchen. But thanks to the media attention from the closure, they were offered a helping hand from Warehouse Project boss Sacha Lord, who reached out in his capacity as Night Time Economy Advisor. 

During their meeting with Lord, the team came up with the idea of a festival to raise the money they had lost by rejecting the grant. Once they established a solid plan for the event, the Greater Manchester Night Time Economy Office awarded them the budget to book acts – many of whom have offered to donate their fees to the Old Abbey anyway. 

Frankie said: “We've pulled together loads of promoters that have worked at the venue over the last four or five years, local, from Manchester, people who love the space, to try and come together and just have a big party and hopefully we're going to put on a really nice event. And it's what we're good at – bringing people together in the space.”

There are already some exciting plans bubbling away behind the scenes at the Old Abbey Taphouse – providing they raise enough money. They are looking to reduce the size of the kitchen, remove the bar and create a club space in the back, separate from the pub. This way they can diversify the space to hold different kinds of events for different groups of people, including lectures and talks. As it stands, the profits they earn in the summer carry them through the winter, but with the proposed refurbishment they are hoping to “change the narrative” and increase business in the quieter months. 

Frankie said: “There are a lot of moving parts, but I do feel really positive that if we can show that the space is growing and changing, which we've not been able to do for so long, that we are a social enterprise, and we have these other ways for having funding and getting support, which is not just via footfall.”

The pub’s landlord Bruntwood have agreed to help with the refurbishments inside the pub and the hope is that they can also franchise out the kitchen to another business. Eventually, they are also looking to make the premises more accessible for disabled people, who currently have to use a toilet in a neighbouring building. 

Another aspect that is important to the Old Abbey team is their track record as a training and development pub. Over the last eight years, the pub has trained up young staff from scratch, who have then moved on to management positions at other prominent Manchester venues. This is something Frankie is particularly proud of. 

He said: “It sounds boring, but it's actually quite radical. It's like a pub trying to access government funding to become an adult learning space, which we've done in really fun ways already. We've done DJ workshops, we've done the kick starter, we've trained up chefs, doing apprenticeship schemes to manage venues. We've got a different way of looking at education and a lot of the team have gone on to do really good things.”

For now, all focus is on the upcoming fundraiser festival, which is taking place 24-26 August at the Old Abbey Taphouse. While there is still some way to go, there is a “renewed energy” and optimism about the pub’s future. 

Frankie said: “It's a drop in the ocean for what this venue needs to be sustainable. What we can do with this little bit of investment is generate enough money to bring a rise in footfall in the winter, which would be good for us then to go and get further investment. It's not a golden ticket, but it's the first step in the ladder of how we can change our narrative for the long term.” 

• More information about the Old Abbey Taphouse weekend fundraiser can be found on Skiddle, where you can also purchase pay-as-you-feel tickets for the event.