Manchester openings carry a weight that most UK cities cannot match. The food scene is competitive, the audience is opinionated, and the city has a particular pride in being first — first to hear about things, first to claim them, first to make them its own. When Rassam announced Deansgate, the response from the Manchester food community was immediate and unmistakable.
The Queue That Arrived Before Breakfast
The store was set to open at noon. By 10am, there were already people in position on Deansgate. By the time the doors opened, the count was past two hundred. The wait for a table stretched to two hours and held there for most of the afternoon. The I Love MCR accounts had picked it up. Local food writers had written preview pieces. The city had arrived, and it was hungry.
“We have opened fourteen stores. We have never had a Tuesday like that one.”
What Manchester Wants
The Deansgate location was designed with Manchester in mind. Larger format, with the capacity to hold the kind of group visits that the city specialises in. The menu carried every Rassam signature plus several builds developed specifically for the Manchester opening, incorporating flavour profiles that had been workshopped over several months of local research.
By the end of launch week, the numbers were the strongest of any Rassam opening on record. Not just in footfall, but in social reach, in press coverage, and in the metric the team cares about most: how many people came back within seven days. Manchester came back at a rate that nobody had seen before. The city had decided, and it had decided yes.
