Popular North Manchester bar and restaurant has change of owners

A popular bar and restaurant in North Manchester has been sold to new owers.

The Solita bar and restaurant will now reopen as the Folk café bar after it was sold by Simon Pogson.

Simon Pogson operates a number of Solita restaurants, in addition to other drinking and dining concepts across Greater Manchester.

He was looking for a sale so he could focus on the other sites within his portfolio.

Specialist business property adviser Christie & Co negotiated a new free of tie lease for the venue on Bury New Road in Prestwich.

The property can accommodate up to 170 covers across the main restaurant and lower ground floor bar, in addition to a private dining space for 20 guests and outdoor seating for a further 20.

The venue has a licence to trade until midnight, and until 1am on Friday and Saturday.

The new tenant is Justin Parkinson who plans to open a second branch of his established Folk café bar, which currently operates from the South Manchester suburb of Didsbury.

Justin said: “We are incredibly excited to be opening Folk in Prestwich. There is already a growing cluster of great independent bars and eateries in this popular village, and Folk will sit perfectly besides them, helping to make Prestwich a real destination and a great reason not to travel into the city centre for a night out.”

Tom O’Malley, senior business agent at Christie & Co, handled the sale.

He said: “Prestwich is a rapidly gentrifying area which is becoming increasingly attractive to a range of hospitality operators who would have previously only considered sites in the city centre or South Manchester.

“We expect this trend to continue as the number of high quality, independent bars and eateries grows to service the increasingly discerning local clientele.”

The former Solita was sold on a leasehold basis off an asking price of £100,000.