Manchester businesses have been opening their doors and welcoming back customers for long-awaited lattes and fantastic filter brews; which is welcome news after 14 weeks of sipping instant coffee.
Costa Coffee recently made headlines for giving all their coffee club members 300 points – the equivalent of £3 – as a “welcome back” token for customers. But the luxury of being able to provide free drinks simply isn’t possible for smaller businesses who have been struggling to keep their heads above water during lockdown.
We’re spoiled for choice when it comes to local coffee shops in Manchester – and you can show your support by heading down to visit some this weekend.
Here are a few ideas…
Soul Coffee
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Northern Quarter is renowned for its alternative and independent stores. But their cafes are second to none.
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One perfect case in point is Soul Coffee.
Situated on Great Ancoats Street, Soul Coffee is a unique coffee and gelato bar serving speciality blend drinks, handmade Italian Gelato and some disco dancer brunch & dessert items.
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The headliners of the menu are the decadent desserts all whimsically named after popular soul songs, from ‘Just to keep you satisfied’ french toast stack to their ‘I heard it through the grapevine’ Lotus Biscoff Milky Shake.
Soul Coffee is the only place in Manchester which offers true Italian Gelato in multiple forms from a sweet Affogato to a classic scoop on cone. With more hot weather on the way, it could be worth ducking in.
Idle Hands
Idle Hands is the place to go for a piece of pie and a cuppa.
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The venue excels in pastry-making; baking all kinds of exciting flavours and creations from coffee, cookies and cream to sticky toffee pudding!
Aside from pie, you can also enjoy a lovely lunch menu and treat yourself to a cheeky glass of vino whilst you’re at it.
You can order and collect online or go in as normal – but it’s worth noting that opening times are subject to change as they adjust to the new climate.
Vienna Coffee serve everything from breakfast (named after areas in Manchester like ‘Deansgate’ and Castlefield’) to Sunday roasts or quaint afternoon tea.
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This family-run business is located nearby to St Peter’s Square, serving up a wide variety of delicious dishes.
But as good as the food might be, the clue’s in the name. Customers just can’t get enough of that coffee.
Vienna have their own amazing blend; Guatemalan, Indonesian and Rwandan beans, freshly roasted which they create into a classic Viennese coffee.
ManCoCo is a hidden roastery and café tucked beneath the arches of Hewitt Street in the ever-evolving neighbourhood of Castlefield.
Selling, ethically-sourced coffee from single origin farms and estates, ManCoCo hand-roast the beans right here in Manchester – serving them in fresh cups of coffee or grounded powder to go.
They’ve also got a wide range of organic, artisan teas available, along with own range of cool branded cups.
If you’ve had a bit of a heavy night and need a little pick-me-up for the morning, ManCoCo is the perfect place to visit and get your hands on a strong Mancunian coffee.
Federal has proven so popular they’ve had to branch out.
Now, the popular cafe has two spots in town – one in Deansgate and another in Northern Quarter.
Federal prides itself on “Antipodean happiness” in Manchester, serving food and drink that has seen customers coming back in through their doors since 2014.
Both cafes are open for walk-ins only; serving breakfast, all day brunch, lunch options, coffee and cocktails!
They regularly run enticing deals on their socials – including a bagel and coffee for £5.
Another caffeine pit stop in the Northern Quarter is Ezra & Gil; Ezra meaning ‘Helper’ and Gil meaning ‘Happiness’.
E&G was wildly popular before lockdown and nothing has changed in that respect – although the look is a little different with perspex screens and a new ordering system in place.
Known for eclectic coffees from white chocolate matcha lattes to a range of fun iced drinks, Ezra & Gil even has its own an app where customers can click and collect if you prefer.
They’re also open for visitors to sit in or take away.
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Siop Shop
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An ultra cool cafe tucked away down Tib Street is Siop Shop.
This lovely little venue specialises in amazing baked goods – especially their beautiful and indulgent doughnuts!
As well as doughnuts, you can take your pick from a number of exciting savoury options which are updated regularly, including sausage rolls, snickerdoodle cookies, and salted caramel brownies.
You can follow your nose or find them on Tib Street NQ.
Home Sweet Home have won the outdoor seating game in Manchester – creating a European-style continental alfresco section that spreads right through Edge Street.
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While dining outdoors you can scoff down some decadent cakes, sip shakes and tuck into a range of breakfast, lunch and dinner options.
A crowd favourite is the pancakes. Order them and you’ll quickly find out why.
Ultimately, Home Sweet Home is the place to be if you want to soak up some Manchester atmosphere (and hopefully sunshine) whilst chomping on a large wedge of cake!
Chapter One Books is a quirky cafe and bookstore where you can read to your heart’s content in the centre of the city whilst sipping on fresh coffee and munching a slice of homemade cake.
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The Lemon Drizzle and Earl Grey comes highly recommended, and the coffee is cracking, too – making Chapter One an ideal spot to curl up with good book.
Top tip: Make sure you arrive early.
It can be tough to get a seat, sometimes; such is the popularity of the place.
Head over to their website to read more on this NQ hotspot.
Pot Kettle Black
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Up next, we have Pot Kettle Black aka PKB Coffee.
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This stylish coffee house has two sites in Manchester: one in Barton Arcade and the other in Spinningfields.
Currently, they have only reopened their Barton Arcade cafe where you can either book a slot or just drop in.
PKB serve coffee with a twist, taking inspiration from Antipodean culture to bring customers flavours from all the way across the globe.
Flour from Manchester mills, butter from Normandy, pistachios from Iran and chocolate from Belgium. PKB take influence from everywhere.
Outside of the city centre is a beautiful tearoom in Chorlton.
Tea Hive takes inspiration from our Mancunian worker bee and serves hearty brunch and lunch dishes alongside mouthwatering cakes! They use loose leaf tea and artisan coffee so it’s a real treat to go in and enjoy not only the atmosphere but the amazing quality of food and drink.
The most popular choice amongst locals is their Sautéed Mushroom on toast (vegetarian & vegan) – washed down with one of their 10 different types of hot chocolate.
That will definitely hit the spot.
The Manc is supporting Manchester’s independent businesses with the hashtag #buzzingtobeback so if you fancy exploring more of what the city has to offer. Let’s continue supporting local independents to get the region buzzing once more!
Read more about what we’re doing for the industry here.
Manor House Hotel & Spa – The magical garden spa near Manchester with TWO swim-up bars
Daisy Jackson
There’s an increasing number of garden spas popping up around the UK, where you can soak and relax out in the open air.
But a lot of them are missing the key ingredient – the gardens.
That’s what makes Manor House Hotel & Spa over in Cheshire so special. It feels like it’s been built as garden first, spa second, in the way that pools and hot tubs seem to have been slotted in between established trees and flower beds and shrubs.
It’s like stumbling onto the set of a romantic period drama, but with state-of-the-art spa facilities concealed into the grounds. I’m half expecting a sopping wet Colin Firth to emerge from a hot tub.
And although the square footage of the garden spa is relatively small, it’s this clever landscaping that makes it feel like a never-ending maze where every turn reveals a new place to lie down.
There are covered, swinging beds in a herb garden. A sauna concealed as a potting shed. Private bookable hot tubs behind a hedge.
And then the real whimsy – the secret garden. Opened just last year, this corner of the spa is home to a blisteringly turquoise heated pool, surrounded by charming sage green ‘sheds’ (which are actually a series of cosy indoor relaxation pods).
The Secret GardenOne of two cold plunge poolsThe relaxation sheds in the secret gardenA huge heated poolThe Secret Garden’s sauna
There’s a second swim-up bar here, because why stop at one, a cold plunge pool with spring flowers wrapped around it, a lawn for sunbathing if you’re lucky, and a traditional Finnish sauna overlooking it all.
It doesn’t stop there – weave along the footpaths and you’ll come across a sunken, circular hydrotherapy pool, a cosy summer house with noise-cancelling headphones you can plug in to, a gently heated panoramic laconium, hammocks, squishy sunbeds, swing seats, and so much more.
The adjective that keeps coming to mind is ‘pretty’, but that almost feels too flippant for how gorgeous the spa garden is.
And you might think with it being an outdoor garden spa that it would be a waste of time in bad weather – but you’re wrong.
Manor House has built subtle shelters which look more like garden pagodas over a lot of the facilities here, including part of the main pool and swim-up bar, and most of the double lounge beds.
The main pool and swim-up barThe Potting Shed saunaA classic cold plunge tubThe hydrotherapy pool
But even beyond that, your classic spa facilities like the saunas and salt steam chamber have been constructed in out-buildings, safe from the infamous North West weather, AND there’s a sizeable indoor pool, sauna and steam room back inside the main hotel building.
The metal cold plunge tub is exposed to the elements – but if you’re being brave enough to dunk in this, a little drizzle is the least of your worries.
They’ve got an enormous list of treatments on offer here, whether you want to be scrubbed and rubbed into a new person, or give your skin a real boost with a facial. Once you’re done with your treatment, Manor House has built a cosy relaxation lounge, where you can pull the curtains across your own private booth to sip a cup of herbal tea and unwind.
Private relaxation booths for post-treatmentMezze lunchDinner in the StablesBreakfast the next dayThe Salt ShedDrinks from The Bothy Bar, a swim-up bar in the secret gardenThe indoor poolThe Stables restaurantBedroomsCovered beds in the herb garden
Alongside all that relaxing, a typical spa package at Manor House may include an afternoon tea, a brunch, or a mezze platter lunch, with a glass of fizz served to you in the Pool House.
And if you go for the overnight, you’ll be sinking into a huge plush bed, full from a refined British gastropub dinner in the hotel’s cosy restaurant space, The Stables.
Manor House is currently running a full Spring Renewal Spa Escape, for the ultimate taste of everything that’s on offer while the gardens are in full bloom.
The Manor House Spring Renewal Spa Escape package
An overnight hotel stay
A 60-minute Collagen Renewal Ritual (a soothing, exfoliating back massage, followed by a luxurious collagen facial)
Full access to the spa, with 18 spa experiences, on both days of your stay
A delicious three-course dinner in the Stables restaurant
Five Greater Manchester-based music artists you should listen to | April 2026
Danny Jones
Ay up, you lot – we’re back with another box office batch of music from in and around Greater Manchester for you to get your teeth stuck into.
We’d like to think you know the deal by now, but if not, here’s a quick rundown for you…
Every month, we look back on the local bands and artists, either hailing from or now based in the area, that are spending regular time in our rotation.
It doesn’t matter if they’re still just young prospects or they’ve been at it for decades: if it’s good and it’s been in our ears, it goes on the list. Ready? Let’s go, then.
Five Manc bands and artists we’ve been listening to recently
1. Harry Lyon
First up is April’s cover star: the wonderfully talented Harry Lyon, who is another born and bred and now quietly plying his trade here in Greater Manchester and already showcasing a great level of versatility early in his career.
He moved to the city from Sheffield not too long ago, and his creative output has only ramped up since he got here. Toying with everything from alt-pop/indie to straight singer-songwriter stuff that wouldn’t sound out of place on the radio, his often R’n’B-esque vocals mean he can turn to multiple styles.
We actually lucky enough to bump into him in person earlier this month over in Stretford, and you’ll be glad to hear he’s also as sound a person as we hoped he’d be; he even teased a new single on the way, but for now, we’ll recommend ‘Violet’, ‘Backwards’ and the piano version of ‘While We’re Still Young’.
In fact, he does acoustic versions for most of his songs, and a fair few of them genuinely rival the originals in their own way.
From an up-and-comer to some Manc veterans that often get overlooked in the shadow of their even longer-standing and more well-known predecessors, but we’re going to go out on a limb and say something controversial here… We think we might prefer Black Grape to Happy Mondays.
Before you bite our heads off, let us explain: while the Mondays are obviously way more iconic and had a huge influence on the overall Madchester scene, we would argue that their progenic spin-off are almost a more honed evolution of at least some of what the Ryders and co. first created a buzz around.
Not only do the likes of ‘Kelly’s Heroes’, ‘Nine Lives’, ‘String Theory’ and more have so much more guitar in them (which will always score extra points for me), but more importantly, there is so much more successful experimentation with different instruments, cultural sounds and blends of energy.
It can be hard to know where to start, but those three examples aren’t bad options, and ‘In The Name of The Father’ is also such a vibe – we’re hoping we see it on the setlist for Outwards Fest next month.
BLACK GRAPE play Outwards Festival on Saturday 2nd May 😎
For fans of Sports Team, Spangled, Deadletter, and pretty much any current post-punk pioneers, these former students who originally hail from Cambridgeshire but have come up in and around the local rock scene have been making a splash for a little while, and now it feels like things are hitting a fever pitch.
Sometimes the idiosyncratic lyrics put you in mind of rising Oldham star, Seb Lowe; there’s even one intro that could be the start of a more upbeat and melody-forward King Krule, and you even get notes of Slaves/Soft Play at times. Whatever you hear, personally, you won’t find a bad song – we haven’t yet.
As the lyrics on ‘Are You The Best Yet?’ state, some of this stuff literally makes our knees go weak. We can’t remember the last time a band came around that has you eagerly awaiting the inevitable guitar break, let alone when you fully lock into one and pull a face (we’ve all got our own).
They’re so, SO good, and they help prolong some songs that, while brilliant, could feel more like fast-paced flashes in the pan without them. It all amounts to something extra and ups an already healthy dose of swagger: that’s definitely what you get on the recent ‘Cambridge Is On Fire’ and most of their tracks.
In at number four is another one to watch within the genre. Some industry figures have equated them to the likes of the Amyl and the Sniffers, Lambrini Girls, Viagra Boys, and so on, but we think there’s a much cooler sense of darkness going on with their approach – however familiar the repetitive guitar playing and aggressive, shouty vocals may be.
Luckily, their discography – not unlike that of their aforementioned punky peers – isn’t that extensive just yet, so you can easily work your way through all their releases soon enough, and they’ve also got a big gig at White Hotel coming up just after they drop their debut LP, Hodge Podge. Watch this space…
Our present picks would be ‘American Boy II’, ‘Marina’ for the foreboding sense of build and that central riff alone, and you simply have to listen to their latest single, ‘Creeping Offences’, which, understandably, is the best track in terms of production they’ve dropped yet.
We want to see them live before passing any decisive judgement, but we like what we’re seeing so far.
5. A Certain Ratio
Now, we’ve touched on electronic-influenced alternative group in Black Grape, but what about another truly influential act from within that fluid space? Probably one of your bands/favourite DJ’s favourite artists, whether you know it or not, A Certain Ratio were tastemakers long before even they knew.
If the previous two are post-punk, then these lot are the funkier forerunners, known for their trademark muted strumming patterns, heavily distorted, codified and multi-layered mixes, ACR have been going nearly half a century now, and they were doing all this stuff long before virtually anyone else.
You’ll inevitably fall down a bit of a rabbit hole listening to their stuff, but ‘All Comes Down To This’ is a good starting point, and ‘1982’ has always made us think of what a Doctor Who-themed rave might sound like.
Oh, and purely because it still sticks with us as an eye-opening first listen, it really doesn’t get much better than this one:
And once again, that’s all she wrote.
We hope you dive into at least some of these names over the long bank holiday weekend, as three uninterrupted days of listening couldn’t have timed any better.
Jess Walmsley -
14th July 2020 
