Origin Story
Once upon a time (10 November 2023), I had the idea to open a coffee shop. I was in India visiting my best friend Sasha, and on my last day there she took me to a beautiful bookshop in Delhi.
As we were perusing the shelves I became aware of how many books and authors there were that I had never even heard of before, and that I probably would never see again once I got home to the UK. It made me think about how important different spaces are, and I casually started talking to Sash about how cool it would be to have my own coffee shop full of books written by authors around the world, a place full of portals to other places.
It was easy enough to get into an in-depth conversation fantasising about creating this magical space and we chattered away for ages, but by the time we left the bookshop we had already moved on to other topics, and that was that.
The following night when I landed in Manchester, my brother Afraz picked me up from the airport. As we drove home he was on the phone with our other siblings and he got into a conversation with them about our newsagents.
My dad owned and ran Duke Bar News, a newsagents in Burnley, and after he retired we started renting the business out. At this moment in time the tenant’s that were renting the shop appeared to have packed up and done a runner. Not personally interested in this, I wasn’t paying much attention until Afraz asked my other brother if he had any ideas about something we could do with the shop ourselves, instead of having to find new tenants.
I perked right up and immediately said, “I have an idea!” and I told them all about the coffee shop full of books that I had dreamed up just a day before. To my utter surprise everyone was on board straight away, and with barely any discussion we made the decision to go for it.
In just a couple of weeks Afraz got the locks changed so we could get back into the property, and we took our first baby steps on what would turn out to be a very long, creative, and expensive road.
Here is a video of me in the shop before we started any work on it: