21/07/2026
There’s another story we wanted to tell and, pretty much, 2 years to the day, this seems as good a time as any.
We will preface it by saying that opening a restaurant isn’t easy, it’s not enough to have a good concept and be able to cook, it’s a steep learning curve and most of us don’t make it.
So, it was, July 2024 pretty much 2 years to the day after opening that we got the call, the call that basically said you are most likely not going to be able to trade yourselves out of your financial situation.
A few hours later we were sat in front of a liquidator, discussing how best to close Stretford Canteen.
It had all happened so fast we hadn’t had any time to reflect but here we were being told to make sure we took out any personal things from the restaurant asap because once we closed the doors everything would have its price.
We drove away in a state of shock. We had put SO much energy (and money) into doing this thing and suddenly it was all about to be over. Just like that.
We pulled up outside 118 Chester Road and immediately bumped into a member of our staff outside the Canteen. Do we tell him we thought?
But, no we decided, we needed to think carefully about how we told our staff (our friends!) what was happening.
Inside we went and looking around it wasn’t a case of what we would take but more what we wouldn’t take. It was ALL personal (!) It was ALL things that meant a great deal to us.
And so, with extremely heavy hearts we started to take some of our artwork off the walls (artwork that had been in the family for years) and put them in the back of the car. We will come back for the rest we thought.
Stretford Canteen has always, even when nobody was in the place a warm, special place but symbolically, once we took the pictures off the wall, the place seemed very cold, not ours.
We got in the car and drove off in silence. What was there to say?
Continued in comments
