A new award-winning pie shop has landed in the city centre, just in time for payday.
Ate Days A Week, Stockport’s music-themed pie shop, has made the move over to Manchester – opening its doors on Cooper Street this Wednesday inside the former Porky Pig unit.
Open from 8am in the week and 10am on weekends, its new Manchester cafe menu boasts a number of breakfast pies filled with all your go-to Full English delights, alongside some rotating all-day favourites.
Head inside and you’ll find classic hand-shaped pies in flavours like steak, cheese and onion and chicken balti, alongside some delightful breakfast additions.
Think a Full English pie, filled with all your classic breakfast favourites, and another called ‘Bake Me Up Before You Go Go’ – stuffed with bacon beans, cheddar cheese, hash brown, black pudding and Brown Sauce gravy.
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And that’s not all. There are pie barms for the Wigan purists, breakfast barms and beans on toast for local construction and office workers, plus sausage rolls, chocolate chip cookies, and some brilliantly named hot sandwiches (lest we forget, the team are really well known for butites, too).
Currently on the blackboard, you’ll find ‘I Ham The Walrus’ (fried eggs, chips, and picalilli) and ‘Bartender and The Beef’ (braised steak, Welsh rarebit, caramelised onions, and a pot of gravy for dipping).
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These, however, are set to rotate over time, just like the pies.
All of Ate Days A Week menu is currently available to enjoy as a takeaway, but in a couple of weeks, the cafe will be open for dining in too – with a new 40(ish) cover restaurant space currently being installed upstairs.
The music-themed eatery has made quite a name for itself with dishes like Don’t Look Back In Banger and (I Just) Died In Your Barm since launching in Stockport in 2020.
The brand has had a meteoric rise, having transitioned quickly from being a takeaway-only site to opening its first bricks and mortar site in a former chippy, before moving into Manchester.
When owner Andy James announced the move earlier this year, he said that he wanted to “move Ate Days A Week to a site that allows us to continue to push on with what we do, get bigger and better and fully flourish”
He also acknowledged that “location will play a vital part”, and now we’ve seen exactly where the shop is – we can completely understand why.
Feature image – The Manc Group
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Sir Jim Ratcliffe has increased his stake in Manchester United
Danny Jones
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has increased his investment in Manchester United Football Club, taking his current stake from 27.7% to 28.94%.
The Failsworth-born billionaire officially became a minority shareholder in Man United earlier this year, bringing in the Sports arm of his INEOS petrochemical company and plenty of new personnel with him following an initial £1.25 billion acquisition which saw him buy over a quarter of the club.
While his tenure at Old Trafford has been a somewhat turbulent affair so far – having pleased most fans by taking at least some control away from the family but making a number of less-than-popular decisions of late – he is, at the very least, putting lots of money where his mouth is.
Sir Jim Ratcliffe has injected a further $100m into Manchester United and now owns 28.94% of the club. This completes a planned $300m investment pledged at the time of purchase. $200m was paid back then out of Ratcliffe’s personal funds.
As per multiple outlets, the 72-year-old has pumped a further of approximately £79.3m into Man United to increase his overall stake just before the end of the year.
This latest figure payment was actually promised as part of his initial partial takeover which was completed back in February, with a filing listed by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) confirming the final payment this week, with Ratcliffe receiving additional shares in return.
It also detailed that the ownership of the shares has transferred from Ratcliffe personally to the INEOS Group as a whole, who also have stakes in French football club OGC Nice, the INEOS Grenaiders cycling team (formerly Team Sky), as well as Formula 1, sailing, rugby and more.
Although supporters will be pleased to hear that Ratcliffe is committed to investing in the club, Keegan’s article details that the money itself won’t be strictly put towards any potential signings in the upcoming transfer window.
Similarly, Press Associates (PA) understand that the funds will be put towards infrastructure rather than player recruitment, as it is also expected that some squad members could be offloaded this January.
Could Man United’s homegrown number 10 really be on his way out after nearly two decades in red?
News of Ratcliffe increasing his United stake won’t do much for many of his early detractors, however, as the Greater Manchester local has been accused of ‘forgetting his roots’ and ‘betraying the working class’ with some recent internal steps.
Most recently, Sir Jim and his newly rebuilt executive board received immense backlash for increasing ticket prices for remaining games this season to a whopping £66 across the board, with no concessions made for young, old or disabled fans.
With sporting director Dan Ashworth having been dismissed after just five months – a man who spent just as much time on gardening leave at his former club as he did in his actual role at United – it’s fair to say Ratcliffe and co. could have been more economical.
Record 29 million people expected to drive home for Christmas this year
Emily Sergeant
Drivers are being told to prepare for long queues, as a record number of festive trips are predicted across the UK ahead of the big day.
With the festive season generally known to make the roads nationwide busier than usual, travel warnings have now been issued to all those making Christmas getaway trips for the holidays – with an annual study by the RAC and INRIX suggesting that 29 million journeys are planned before Christmas Day arrives.
Nearly half of these journeys (14.3 million) are set to be crammed into this coming weekend.
But, as Christmas falls mid-week this year, the figures suggest there will be an extended period of ‘pre-Christmas panic’ on the roads, with 5.7m trips taken yesterday and today alone.
The true festive getaway kicks off tomorrow (20 December), with an expected 3 million trips on this day, before the figure then jumps up to 3.7 million and 2.9 million this coming weekend (Saturday 21 and Sunday 22 December) – which is the final weekend before the big day itself.
A record 29 million people expected to drive home for Christmas this year / Credit: Geograph
By far the single busiest day, however, has to be Christmas Eve, with 3.8 million separate getaway journeys expected by car, on top of the final flurries of commuter traffic.
To make matters worse for everyone, the RAC’s research has also revealed that a further 4.7 million trips are expected at some point between the 20 and 22 December, and 2.5 million on either the 23 or 24 December, all coming from motorists who haven’t yet decided which day they’ll travel.
When it comes to the best and worst times to travel over the festive period, the research has revealed that the worst time to travel along major routes will be between 1pm and 7pm, especially tomorrow and Saturday, so both the RAC and INRIX are suggesting that drivers set off early in the morning, or later in the evening when the heaviest of the traffic should have subsided.
After the big day, there are an additional 4.4 million trips predicted on Boxing Day and 3.8 million on Friday 27 December.
On these days, drivers are advised to avoid major roads during the hours of 10am to 3pm, which is when journeys are expected to take significantly longer than usual.
Georgina Pellant -
27th April 2022 
