"Maybe we need to look at ourselves": Manchester bars and restaurants' terrible two-year hangover

Go to the pub now, or a bar or a restaurant, and you’d hardly think that the pandemic had happened. The sun has - finally - reappeared, beer gardens are packed, and people are spilling out of the city’s pubs and clubs. Same as it ever was.

But appearances can be deceptive. Two years on this month from the very first lockdown, when the country was thrown into that bizarre, at times unnerving stasis, while things might look like they’ve returned to normal, beneath the surface the hospitality industry is facing an existential crisis. And it will get worse before it gets better. Potentially much worse.

“It’s definitely not normal,” says Justin Crawford, co-owner of Electrik in Chorlton, the Hillary Step in Whalley Range and Volta in Didsbury. He’s also one of the directors of Escape To Freight Island and Refuge, so he’s got a bird’s eye view of the situation, from neighbourhood bars to upscale city centre spots where the footfall is in the thousands.

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Justin, like every other operator in Manchester, is seeing a staffing crisis unfolding in front of his eyes, like a train wreck in slow motion. And it all stretches back to lockdown.

“A lot of people who were working in hospitality and were furloughed started to seriously rethink why they were in the industry,” he says. “Some decided it wasn’t for them. But a bigger factor than people realise, is that a lot of people are in hospitality by default.

“Maybe they carried on doing it after their degree, or they did it to supplement their training, or as a second job. So furlough gave people the opportunity to think ‘I was training as a teacher, or I