Northern Quarter favourite Home Sweet Home has announced it will close its doors for good after one final service on Saturday.
The popular brunch and burger restaurant – beloved for its cakes, pancakes and milkshakes – has been feeding loyal fans on Edge Street for over a decade, but now bosses say it’s time for them to ‘move forward’ with ‘new projects’ instead.
Sharing the news of the eatery’s closure in a heartfelt post on social media on Thursday night, bosses wrote: “After 10yrs of milkshakes, cheeseburger toasties, a million breakfasts and a whole bunch of happy tummies sadly guys it’s time for us to go.
Saying, unequivocally, that ‘it sucks’, they continued: “sadly HomeSweet just has to float away into the chocolate river.”
“It’s been the most wonderful of times and we will miss soothing your hangovers and satisfying your cravings. Drop in, say goodbye and get your final fix.”
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The American comfort food joint first opened on Edge Street in the Northern Quarter in 2012, followed by a second site at the Great Northern Warehouse in 2015, which closed in 2019.
Beautiful Drinks, the company behind Home Sweet Home, also owns a number of other restaurants in the city including burger bar Almost Famous, Tex Mex eatery Lust Luck Liquor and Burn.
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In recent years, it has also closed its ‘hidden’ cocktail bar Convenience Store, which sat in the same building as Almost Famous and Lust Luck since 2017, having previously been known as tiki bar Keko’s.
Comments poured in from Home Sweet Home fans last night following the announcement, with one person saying: “End of an era! Me and @maguire40 lived round the corner when you opened and for your first 5 years. We were major fans of your cheeseburger toasties and milkshakes! Kept me fuelled when I was preggo with the twins. You’ll be missed.”
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Another person added: “Very sad news. Many brunches, lunches and cakes have been consumed on your premises!”
A third commented: “Absolutely gutted to read this. Home sweet home became the place I’d reunite with my uni friends and catch up over lovely food from lovely people. I will miss this so very much”
The full post read: “Bittersweeet… After 10yrs of milkshakes, cheeseburger toasties, a million breakfasts and a whole bunch of happy tummies sadly guys it’s time for us to go. I know it sucks right, your go to place for fun and friends and a warm glow will be no more.
“HomeSweet will close its doors forevers after service on Saturday 23rd July.
“We’re moving forward with exciting new projects and sadly HomeSweet just has to float away in to the chocolate river. It’s been the most wonderful of times and we will miss soothing your hangovers and satisfying your cravings. Drop in, say goodbye and get your final fix.
Home Sweet Home will close its doors for one last time following its final service on Saturday 23 July. It is not yet clear what new projects Beautiful Drinks is working on next.
Feature image – Home Sweet Home
News
Pep Guardiola agrees new contract to stay at Manchester City for at least one more year
Danny Jones
Blues will be delighted to hear that Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola is staying after agreeing to sign a contract extension that will keep him at the club for at least one more year.
The Catalan coach and supremely talented tactician has won all there is to win with Man City and after completing not only a record-matching treble but making history by becoming the first English team to win four Premier League titles in a row, you could argue his Etihad project is well and truly completed.
Guardiola, who joined City back in 2016, has gradually been creeping towards the end of his most recent contract, leaving those slowly searching for his replacement and the fan base wondering what the future holds for their next chapter.
But it turns out they don’t have to worry about life after Pep for a little while longer, as the 53-year-old has now extended his stay for at least another season. The blue moon that has loomed over Manchester for the best part of a decade isn’t going anywhere just yet.
𝗘𝘅𝗰𝗹𝘂𝘀𝗶𝘃𝗲: Manchester City manager Pep Guardiola has agreed a new one-year contract extension with the option of an additional year.
The 53-year-old’s existing City deal was due to expire at the end of this season and, if the new terms are fulfilled, it would take… pic.twitter.com/S8r1gVEcPj
Breaking the news on Tuesday evening, 19 November, The Athletic‘s Sam Lee revealed that Pep Guardiola will remain head coach for another season after agreeing to a new one-year deal.
The former Barcelona and Bayern Munich manager, who is comfortably one of the most decorated and celebrated coaches in football history, was due to leave the club at the end of the current campaign.
However, although his contract would have seen him depart by June of next year, this new deal will now see him stay in post until the summer of 2026, which will talk his tenure to a full 10 years.
Although City themselves are yet to confirm the signing amid the international break, it’s only a matter of time before they deliver the news all Blues have been waiting for – news that will no doubt come as a huge relief given the immense success he has brought to East Manchester.
Despite waiting until now to seemingly decide his future, the man himself has actually been pretty clear on the matter, insisting that he “fell in love” with the club from the moment he got here and saying as far back as 2020 that “unless they [CFG] sack me, I will stay here.”
Man City fans will honour Pep with a banner which reads in Catalan, 'we want you to stay'…
"They'll have to bring me the bill. I will pay the bank. I don't want them to spend money for that reason. I feel in love since the first day I came here." 🥺
Better still, while the details of the agreement are yet to be fully detailed, the report says that his new contract also includes the option to extend for a further year beyond that, meaning we could be looking at Pep in the dugout until 2027.
Should City go on to close the gap on current league leaders Liverpool, it would mean Guardiola would have overseen five title wins with the same team in a row: a feat only matched by very few in European football, most notably Juventus and Bayern Munich, the latter having managed 13 consecutive years.
Who knows if/when Guardiola will actually leave the Etihad Stadium for a new challenge, all we know is he changed modern football forever and has given Manchester – a city already spoilt in this respect – some of the most impressive football it’s ever seen.
All we do know is that the beautiful game’s passionate, bald, tiki-taka extraordinaire known simply as Pep is staying in 0161 for the time being and there are countless fans who are absolutely buzzing about it.
‘Shocking’ images taken with AI camera of drivers using mobiles and not wearing seatbelts released
Emily Sergeant
Thousands of people in Greater Manchester have been caught using mobile phones while driving or not wearing their seat belts.
Images captured by the state-of-the-art ‘Heads Up’ camera system – which uses a combination of artificial intelligence (AI) and human reviewers – as part of a trial in Greater Manchester, show drivers holding mobile phones in front of their face, to their ear while behind the wheel, and sometimes with passengers next to them.
According to Transport for Greater Manchester (TfGM), in several cases, the cameras also found drivers and passengers, both passengers and children, not being securely fastened in their seats or not wearing seat belts at all.
The trial aims to detect drivers who are potentially breaking the law and putting themselves, their passengers, and other road users, at risk.
AI is used as the first filter in a bid to ensure privacy for “the vast majority of law-abiding motorists” while also checking hundreds of thousands of vehicles over an intermittent period, TfGM explained – something which would likely take a human reviewer several months to complete.
Images containing “evidence of an offence” then go through a two-stage human check to confirm that an offence has taken place.
Any offences detected as part of the trial were then passed on to Greater Manchester Police (GMP) to consider for further action, however if no offence was committed, the image was immediately deleted by the software.
More than 3,200 people have been caught using mobile phones while driving or not wearing seat belts as part of a trial of state-of-the-art cameras in Greater Manchester.
— Safer Roads Greater Manchester Partnership (@SaferRoadsGM) November 19, 2024
The trial – which was carried out by AECOM and Acusensus, on behalf of Safer Roads Greater Manchester – was held across the region throughout September and October to “gather data” and “understand the scale of the issue” to inform future education campaigns and enforcement.
It comes after it was revealed that nearly 10,000 people who live in, work in, or visit Greater Manchester have been killed or seriously injured on our roads over the last decade.
During the deployment, the ‘Heads Up’ system recorded 812 drivers distracted by using mobile phones behind the wheel, and 2,393 incidents of seat belt non-compliance by drivers or passengers.
As it stands, no offenders have yet been prosecuted from this trial, TfGM confirmed.