Popular food fair is making a return to Manchester this summer
The hugely popular Grub Food Fair is returning to Manchester city centre this summer.
The food fair is held in the Courtyard in Baring Street – the gateway to the Mayfield development which occupies a 24-acre site next to Piccadilly station.
From the start of next month Grub will return to an improved outdoor space – the same location it occupied in 2017 –offering a fantastic array of street food and drink to suit every taste.
Investment in the Courtyard area includes the creation of a decked area; a bigger covered seating space; an upgraded and expanded bar area, and also extra room for traders.
James Heather, development director at U+I in Manchester, said: “We are continuing to evolve our successful partnership with Grub and are passionate about re-establishing Mayfield as a vibrant place for everyone to come and enjoy.
“We have made great progress in the 11 months since we opened up at Baring Street and started to bring this forgotten part of the city back to life. As well as Grub, we have opened our new U+I office here, created the urban garden with our partners from the Green Health Alliance and most recently launched Mayfield & Co, the new co-working space.”
Jason Bailey, co-founder of Grub, said: “We had a smashing first year at Mayfield, it’s an utterly tremendous space to work with. Grub was a touch more popular than we anticipated last year and so we’ve increased the covered seating area and nearly doubled the size of the bar.
“The bigger bar means that we can more than double the number of cask beers available whilst pouring our amazing house beers from Runaway Brewery, Atom Beers, Magic Rock Brewing and Squawk on top of all the best local and Northern beers we can get our hands on.”
Grub’s summer season will kick off at noon on May 4 with: Gravy Train; Howlin Tacos, Parmstar, The Ottomen and Drizzle City Bakes.
Grub will operate from 12noon to 10pm Thursday to Saturday and 12-6pm on Sundays, where the UK’s first exclusively vegan weekly street food event #PlantPoweredSunday will continue.
Meanwhile, Fairfield Social Club on Temperance Street, which was Grub’s winter home at Mayfield will be used as an events space with a number of weddings, exhibitions, screenings, gigs and business conferences already booked.
Details of the summer events programme for the Fairfield Social Club will be announced in due course.
The Mayfield Partnership’s long-term plan for Mayfield is to create an iconic, £1bn mixed-use community over the next 10 years, including a 6.5 acre park, and high quality commercial, residential and leisure facilities. The 24-acre site, next to Piccadilly Station, has been derelict for over a decade.
The wider Mayfield regeneration vision will potentially provide 1,300 homes, 75,000 sq m of office space, a 350-bedroom hotel, retail and leisure space. It is envisaged Mayfield will creating more than over 7,500 office, retail, leisure and construction jobs.
