We went down to Nibble NQ last week to talk to owner, Lauren. Here is what she has to say about the story that led her to running one of the friendliest cafes in Manchester.
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00:00Hello and welcome to Manchester World. My name is Theo Houston Betts and today's video we're going to go straight back to Nibble NQ.
00:05Now you may have seen the video that we've done with them already as part of our Finding the Best Coffee in Manchester series.
00:10But for those videos, the interviews are so condensed and it felt like a real shame to not give you a chance to properly hear about Lauren's story in terms of setting up the business
00:18and in terms of understanding a bit more about why the Northern Quarter is so important for these independent businesses here in Manchester.
00:24It's a wonderful cafe with a wonderful atmosphere, a wonderful vibe and a wonderful manager. So I'll pass you straight over to Lauren.
00:30So my name is Lauren Adam Chesekas and I own Nibble NQ. Crazy little start. Not prepared for it at all. There was no plan, no money, no nothing.
00:39So everything's taken a little bit of a long, a long while to kind of get how I want them to be and everything like that. But yeah.
00:46So we're a female run. So just that we're like a supportive place that, you know, people are going to be safe and happy in.
00:54We've got like a full gluten-free shelf above everything else. Like everything is, we've really like refined the allergy processes and all the rest of it.
01:03So people just come in and feel super safe. You know, there's food tech at school, there's human nutrition at uni.
01:08And baking was always like where my, I guess my love for everything was. So it was always the, at some point plan that I would have somewhere of my own and that some of that baking would be me.
01:21And I'm not sure I thought that eight years on, it would still just be me that was baking, but that's where we are, but that's fine.
01:27I think like the good thing about the Northern Quarter is you can just be whoever the hell you want to be and no one's going to be judging you.
01:34Do you know what I mean? And that it is more creative and people can be more individual and that, you know, it's not quite as like straight laced as, I don't know, if you were in spinning fields or somewhere.
01:43For example, like I liked that things were a bit more free flowing and that, you know, I would be able to run from somewhere and kind of like set my own rules or not have any rules, as the case may be.
01:56You can go for a pint after work, it doesn't matter what you look like, or you can go for a pint or a glass of wine or whatever before you go out and you're dressed up to the nines.
02:04Like it literally doesn't matter.
02:05This is where I first came when I moved to Manchester and I walked past a cafe and I was just like, oh, I really want a cafe like that.
02:11And then I ended up running that cafe and then I ended up coming here.
02:14It's just like everything's kind of come full circle, but that was where I like instinctively felt like I was, I guess I belonged.
02:23Yeah, I kind of almost feel like because I did it the long way and it was like I had to graft for every single like regular loyal customer that we got.
02:30So they are really like loyal as a result.
02:34I just like talking to people and we kind of wanted this or I wanted this at the beginning to kind of be like my living room.
02:41But other people in it, I've still got the same regulars that came right at the beginning and the same as like we could have started the online shop in lockdown and I got loads of lockdown regulars who are still a thing now.
02:51It's almost been like the most organic, like secure way of doing it in the long run.