Indian street food and craft beer specialist Bundobust has revealed the location for its second Manchester site.
The restaurant will open in “The Cartway”, in the grade-two listed St James’ Building on Oxford Street, which is owned by Bruntwood Works.
It is expected to open the new site in May.
The restaurant will seat 150 people, and will also house brewing tanks as the site becomes the birthplace of its first brewery.
The founders said the new site will retain “so many” original features of the building, previously theatre and music hall, having both an “industrial feel” and “Bundobust feel” to it.
Bundobust was founded in 2014 on Leeds’ Mill Hill by Marko Husak and Mayur Patel. It opened a site in Manchester Piccadilly in 2016 and recently opened a third site on Bold Street in Liverpool.
Mr Patel told BusinessLive it chose to open on Oxford Street as “it’s where it’s all happening”.
“Oxford Road’s got so much going on and further down...it’s got Hatch, it’s got so much going on.”
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Mr Hasak said: “It’s a great space and it lended itself to having a brewery there as we have the goods in and goods out, but in terms of the vibe in the area it seems like there’s a lot of...great independent institutions here already, there are some good venues, good theatres, it’s got its own nighttime economy.
“[There’s] Gorilla, Yes, and you’ve got all the offices as well, so you’ve got the students but there’s a lot of office workers as well. It’s good for lunchtime.
“We think it fits us better than say Deansgate does or Spinningfields, and I think it’s in this sort of building which you don’t really find elsewhere.”
The co-founders also said part of the reason chose the area for its second location was because of its proximity to Oxford Road station.
Mr Patel said: “If you think about Bundobust they’re usually near a train station and with Oxford Road we’ve noticed a commuter belt for us is quite important.”
The co-founders said it chose to open a second site in Manchester as “it’s a big enough city” with “plenty of people about all week”.
Mr Patel said: “The site in Piccadilly has done really well, it was the only site that was available to us when me and Marko were looking.”
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Going forward, the co-founders said they are “both looking at the moment” for new site locations.
Mr Patel said: “It’s considered growth, but we’re not pushing to open any new cities, we just want to open in cities where we a) we can find site and b) where there’s a market for us.
“So I think its considered growth but if opportunities come around it’s tough to turn down really.”
Andrea George, Bruntwood’s director of retail and leisure, said it was “chuffed to bits and delighted” Bundobust took the space.
She said: “We actually came to look at this amazing industrial space and then we went to have lunch at Bundobust and we genuinely went ‘there’s only one operator for this space and it was these guys’, so we had a massive targeted approach having pestered them saying ‘please come and look at it, please come and look at it’, and they did.
“We’re really, really excited to see what they're going to do within the space.”
Ms George said Bruntwood bought the site, formerly a car park, in 2003.
“It’s part of the West Village, so it’s this building and four other buildings where we are looking to create a creative tech sector,” she explained.
“In terms of retail and leisure, we’ve been looking for independents for this area, so you’ll have noticed that Ditto Coffee have opened and we’re very much trying to link West Village with Manchester’s ‘innovation district’, which has this building but also Hatch, Circle Square, and University Green.
“We’re very much looking at supporting new concepts and independent businesses in Manchester.”