Nexus Night Café: A unique city centre safespot, a booze-free chill out zone open from 2am-6am on Saturday nights/Sunday mornings, home to twilight scrabble tournaments, rivers of draws, 4am bacon butties and never ending brews. A taxi calling service and outreach volunteers aim to make this venue into a safe pass home after a night out reveling in the Northern Quarter.
As you may know, after 7 years of loyal service our beloved Nexus Night Café has had to cease running due to the increased cost of running and being hit by funding cuts. After a year of running at a loss we have had to make the decision to put NNC on the backburner. We haven’t gone down without a fight though!
When things started getting serious in October 2011, donations from you lovely lot started rolling in, totaling a brilliant £374.80. Our December 2011 fundraiser, as well as being a magical night of music and fun, raised a whopping £370 – enough to keep us going until the end of 2011.
To put that into context, one Night Café session costs £200 in overheads. In short, though it was heart warming to see the support and enthusiasm that came from you guys in the short term, we are now making plans and writing funding bids to keep NNC going for the long haul.
We are undertaking an in-depth survey of the city centre’s needs, and how the new face of Nexus Night Café can truly respond to these. We hope that by partnering with other charities we can provide a space for valuable services to the city centre, as well as providing a safe place for a wind down and a calming cuppa after a night out in the NQ.
If you are an organisation that would be interested in collaborating with the Night Café, please email [email protected] or ask to speak to Hannah Mosley.
If you are an individual or company who would like to donate to Nexus’s charitable arm, please contact [email protected].
In the immortal words of one Californian senator, we’ll be back.
Not surprised it has gone. Anytime I was there they had run out of food (usually about 5pm ish). Even at Christmas, advertising tea and mince pies, no monce pies, no baked potatoes, no nothing….
Was there just into the new year and was turned away this time because they were closed (even though there were people in there and the doors ope – it was 5.30pm on a Sunday).
If you are going to run something and advertise it do what you say……
from a hungry, tired traveller who tried to give the benefit of the doubt THREE times and still did not get fed! Once is unlucky, twice is coincidence but THREE times is bad management – so no wonder they have closed. Opportunity for someone to open something that works in the city.
Dear Richard,
Thank you for your feedback, which is always valuable to us.
I have a feeling you’re referring to the Day Cafe, rather than the Night Cafe project, which was run from 2am-6am every Saturday night to Sunday morning for the last 7 years, often on volunteer power. The Day Cafe, we are pleased to say,is still very much alive and well.
I am sorry to hear you haven’t enjoyed your experiences of our establishment. As advertised, we close at 7pm on weekdays, 6pm on Sundays, and stop serving food an hour before closing (i.e. 6pm on weekdays and 5pm on Sunday). And as our day cafe has faced its busiest year so far, particularly over the Christmas period, I am not surprised to hear we had run out of mince pies – we do our best to anticipate customer demand, and balance it with avoiding wastage, but sometimes it exceeds our expectations.
Unfortunately it sounds like you’ve been a victim of bad timing and not the best communication on our part – for which we can only apologise. In response to this we are going to make our serving times signage more explicit to avoid confusion.
We hope at some point you’ll have the opportunity to join the many customers who have enjoyed our fare, and recognise the benefit the entire project has brought to the city.
Kind regards,
Hannah Mosley
Manager, Nexus CCS