Lunya

08/06/2020

We have now permanently closed our Manchester site

Manchester Lunya will not be reopening. Please read below.

We have some very sad news about our Manchester site.  We have come to the very difficult decision to close our Manchester site and will not be reopening when current government restrictions are lifted (this does not affect our Liverpool restaurants in Hanover Street and Albert Dock and our online business). The impact of temporary closure of all three of our sites due to the Coronavirus has been devastating.  Despite the incredible effort we are making with our online business,  your unbelievable support, introducing meals to go and our soon to launch take-away, home delivery and collections of hot tapas from Hanover St, it is not enough.  To ensure that Lunya has a future, we have to close our Manchester site permanently to protect our sites in Hanover Street, Liverpool and the Albert Dock.  Manchester is our most expensive site to operate and has the potential if we did re-open to rack up immediate losses which would bring the whole company down and we cannot let this happen.

Rest assured that our online, Liverpool and Albert Dock restaurants are safe (or as safe as anything can be at the moment) and will be reopening fully as soon as government rules allow and we are well advanced in our preparations for this and confident about our future.

Whilst we will not have a restaurant in Manchester, we will still be doing online sales and deliveries to Manchester, click and collect (until the end of June, this will be at Barton Arcade and we will then have another city centre partner venue to collect from). We will be having our own van delivering throughout Manchester, and when rules allow, will be running our cheese, wine, sherry tastings and food and drink quizzes from different city centre venues.  We have a huge number of fantastically loyal and supportive customers in Manchester and feel very sad at closing and in some ways letting you down.  Rest assured that we have done and tried everything to make it work, and every financial projection and calculation we do, leads us to the conclusion that we have to close Manchester down to protect everything else.

We have been in discussions with our Manchester landlord, our lenders and government agencies trying to secure additional funding and support which could help, but we have been unsuccessful in most of this, and there is no option that we can find that means Lunya Manchester can be viable.

In the close to five years that we have been open, Lunya has been taken to heart by Mancunians, supporting us every step of the way. Our highlights being awarded the MEN City Life restaurant of the Year in our first year of opening and being listed in the Good Food Guide for every year we have been open.  We have been successful on so many levels and have loved every minute of it.

The last two years since the referendum have presented additional challenges for everyone in the hospitality industry, and especially us as a hugely import-focused business.  With declining consumer confidence, a huge drop in the Euro exchange rate and large increases in business rates, general costs and overheads, this has meant significant cost pressures and taken together with the devastating impact of the closure from the Coronavirus, it has made Lunya Manchester financially untenable, and our current site too expensive to operate from for as long as we can see.

Our two Liverpool sites are the profitable sites and to protect those, we have had to take this very painful decision to close Manchester to give our remaining businesses in Liverpool a chance and minimise the losses that we will build up as we partially open our Liverpool sites.  We think that we can just about manage with two sites opening with partial covers, whenever the government allows us to. And when restrictions are lifted, we hope to welcome lots of our Manchester customers over to our two Liverpool restaurants and delis.  And in the future, if we can find a smaller, and more cost-effective site in Manchester, we may well be back, but we are talking a few years off.

Rest assured that we are doing everything we can to keep our Manchester staff employed through the furlough scheme for as long as we can before they are made redundant and we will work tirelessly to support them in trying to find alternative jobs. If you have visited our Manchester restaurant, you will know how wonderful they are, and all of us want to thank you for the support you have given us in Manchester and we’ll really miss you.

On a personal level, we are terribly sad and disappointed that this has come to this, and feel a real sense of failure in not keeping Manchester going.  Anyone who knows us and the business will know we have thrown everything at it, are very proud, passionate and active owners and work every day in our restaurants.  We have grown a fabulous restaurant, bar and deli in Manchester, we have made some great friendships and had some really good times working with our team and giving our customers the very best of Catalan and Spanish food. The memories of this and the positive impact we have made on the Manchester gastronomy scene, we will never lose.  We have wonderful customers and hope through our online, local deliveries and other events we will still enjoy their support and serve them – just in a different way. It will be more ‘hasta pronto’ rather than ‘adios’. Manchester hasn’t seen the last of us.

And please rest assured about the security and permanency of our Liverpool restaurants and delis.  You have supported us so well by ordering online and visiting our deli.  Please continue to do so and remember our deliveries and click and collect are not stopping to Manchester and it would be great to get so many over that we can have our own van delivering in Manchester every day!  We have had a lot of long-awaited deliveries last week, and we have most of our previously out-of-stock products back in stock.  Check out our online shop.

Any vouchers that our customers may have are valid to use online and in our Liverpool restaurant and deli. If you have a paper voucher and wish to use it for an online order, please just email Peter at info@lunya.co.uk with a picture of your voucher showing the amount and serial number and we will immediately replace it with an e-voucher so you can use it in our online store.

Thank you again.

Peter & Elaine Kinsella

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