Home of Honest Coffee – A Future Artists Co-op Project
by AshaOn this page, We have everything you need to get involved and support this project.
11th March **UPDATE**
Kickstarter page (Help us FUND this project) Launched https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/futureartists/the-home-of-honest-coffee-manchester Watch our pitch video and read all about the project and the cool perks.
OUR NEXT MEETING IS – Wednesday March 19th @ the sharp project – Manchester – details here GET INVOLVED https://www.eventbrite.com/e/home-of-honest-coffee-kickstarter-launch-meeting-tickets-10867632381
1) PRESS RELEASE – AND SOCIAL MEDIA RELEASES (COPY AND PASTE TOOL KIT) for your newsletters, blogs and social media network.
Part 1 – Overview and subscribe to the mailer form (Join OUR news letter)
Part 2 – 8 point Manifesto about the project
Part 3 – Details of how we are going to do this (Creative Business Plan)
1) PRESS RELASE AND SOCIAL MEDIA (TWITTER / FACEBOOK – COPY AND PASTE SHOUT OUTS)
PRESS
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The City is a wild and noisy beast; the high streets are full of identikit shops, repeated formula, and the same repeated sequel. When the Manchester rain beats down on its work force and the icy chills of the northern wind blows in, the high street offers little escape. For some, Starbucks and Costa Coffee’s bohemian commercialism is as offensive as the Manchester wet season itself!
What if a coffee shop was able to generate £100,000 a year in grants that will enable a community to grow – enabling exploration of the arts and sciences, benefiting health and well being, and being a space to meet, share and create…? That’s our dream, and with a little help, we can make this a reality…
Future Artists presents to you the ‘Home of Honest Coffee’, a brand new concept that we’re hoping to bring to the Manchester high street this summer. Introducing a coffee shop that’s designed to truly serve the community, not just with delicious fair trade coffee and locally produced snacks and treats, but also with opportunities for business start-ups and encouragement for network growth. Would you like a brownie with your cappuccino? Or maybe a sandwich? How about a business grant?
We are fortunate in Manchester to be sharing out city with many forward-thinking ethical companies who are creative in their ways of giving something back to the community. All to often, however, these alternative venues and businesses are shoved to the quirky backstreets, overshadowed by the tax-avoiding giants. Why should the high street be dominated by greedy corporations who care far more about their own profits than the wellbeing of the communities they inhabit?
We want to deliver a high street coffee shop that has community support and local improvement at the forefront of its mission. In order to achieve this, however, we first need a little bit of help and support ourselves. If what I have described so far has caught your attention, read on and I’ll describe our idea to you in a little more detail…
As well as the usual artisan coffee shop features and supplies you may already be expecting, our proposed coffee shop will also feature a comfortable pay-as-you-go co-working environment. This will enable the coffee-shop-workers among you to safely plug in your laptop, help yourself to unlimited refreshments, and work away secure in the knowledge that you don’t need to buy endless cups of coffee to justify taking up the table you have occupied. If you still find yourself choosing to consume endless cups of coffee, that’s fine; the inevitable visit to the toilet that will follow won’t mean you have to endure the hassle of packing up your belongings to keep them safely close by. Our professional host will happily keep a protective eye on your valuables, making your coffee shop experience as convenient for you as possible.
If you’re not a working-coffee kind of person and are simply looking for a comfortable place to enjoy with friends, relax. We won’t all be about laptops and gadgets. We invite you to seat yourself in our cosy artisan café, surrounded by our in-house art gallery featuring work by local and international artists.
If my mention of an art gallery has caught your attention, you might also be intrigued to know about the open space we intend to have to hire out for various functions, such as maybe pop-up theatre events, spoken word evenings, life-drawing classes, or even yoga sessions or networking events. Whatever you might wish to use the space for, it’s there for you.
The Home of Honest Coffee will run as a co-operative charity with profits being donated to schemes set up in the city, giving local creative and educational groups and start-up businesses the chance to thrive and develop in an otherwise unaccommodating economy. These schemes will include the likes of Forever Manchester, who distribute funds to local groups and individuals who are trying to make a positive change in our neighbourhoods across Greater Manchester.
So, in a nutshell, visiting our café instead of the standard high street dominators will get you much more for your money than the standard cup of coffee, and you would be helping to influence a positive change throughout our community. Our mission is to prove that we can choose what kind of world we live in; the power is in every customer, strolling down the high street about to choose where to spend their hard earned money. Join us for an honest cuppa and vote with your brew.
This is what we want to bring to our Manchester high street, but first we’ve got some work to do in getting ourselves established. If you agree that our community-focused coffee shop would sit beautifully on our high street, please watch our video for further information on how you can help us: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/futureartists/the-home-of-honest-coffee-manchester
“Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible” – Frank Zappa
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FACEBOOK
Making the world a better place one cup of coffee at a time… I would definitely be happy to see something like this on the streets of Manchester! What do you guys think? An opportunity to vote with your brew – would be money well spent! Check this out…
https://app.futureartists.net/2014/02/17/home-of-honest-coffee-a-future-artists-co-op-project/
How to #changetheworld with a simple cup of #coffee – This is something well worth supporting! Check it out: http://bit.ly/1m5NrNE #Manchester
PART ONE
What if a coffee shop was able to generate £100,000 a year in grants that will enable a community to grow – enabling exploration of the arts and sciences, benefiting health and well being, and being a space to meet, share and create…
For more information on ‘Home of Honest Coffee’ – please click the link
For more information on Future Artists co-op collective – please click the link
want to help please e-mail info @futureartists.co.uk ‘ subject ‘make me an honest coffee’
PART TWO
Home of honest coffee – the skinny low down – a manifesto of sorts…
1) An Artisan boutique coffee shop to take on the mighty Starbucks, Costa and Nero’s chains – Profits are turned into grants, which are distributed to Health, Creative and start up idea’s within a 30 mile radius of the shop or Hub.
2) A 1st floor or Basement space that will be a PAY AS YOU GO / PAY BY THE MINUTE co-working space for freelancers and meetings – 5p per minute or £3 per hour with complimentary tea/coffee/snacks + Host service – power supply and WIFI.
3) Art gallery surroundings – enjoy a brew surrounded by art by Banksy, Bob Dylan, Eine, Stewy, Dali and new local + International talent.
4) A digital space to project film / presentations / performance
5) Idea’s sharing and classes on any subject each and every evening from Yoga to Art, from Tedx talks to knitting circles – we have space for your passion…
6) A real ethical and radical re-Imagineering of what a high street coffee shop can be. Now the consumer can vote with their brew, make an ethical choice and avoid the tax dodgers thus making an impact on a local level – which means dunk a biscuit with a smile.
7) The first one will be in Manchester, this will prove the model for a national roll out of 10 more across the UK – creating a sustainable touring and idea’s sharing network – Open source thinking, In a physical space.
8) Our goal is to create £100,000 worth of grants that will make an impact in our immediate area.
9) Without deviation from the norm, progress is not possible.
Written by Future Artists Feb 13th 2014.
3) PART THREE
Future Artists Creates a pop up
‘Home
of
Honest Coffee’
A Place in the Manchester for the city to work, rest and play.
Artisan Café – Boutique – Gallery –
co working Space
Project Created by
Future Artists Live Creative Co-op (IPS)
Introduction
David Simon (Creator of ‘The Wire’):
“That may be the ultimate tragedy of capitalism in our time, that it has achieved its dominance without regard to a social compact, without being connected to any other metric for human progress.”
We have come to measure, to an increasing extent, individuals’ success by their wealth, spending power and other assorted trappings. We do the same with the economic success of governments; measure it by an aggregated data set that fails to take into account wealth distribution, educational achievement, innovation, or even the welfare and health of the population they claim to represent. We must shift this perspective. It will be the hardest, simplest thing we have ever had to do as a species.
Manchester – England….
The City is a wild and noisy beast, the high streets are full of identikit shops, repeated formula, the same repeated sequel.
When the Manchester rain beats down on its work force, when icy chills of the northern wind blows in, the high street offers little escape, for some Starbucks and Costa Coffee’s bohemian commercialism is as offensive as the Manchester wet season itself.
Future Artists present to you ‘Home of honest coffee’ a new concept for the high street, a ground floor art installation, an artisan café, a retail space
And a top floor space featuring a pay as you go co-working environment. A place where the currency is honesty – you pay for the amount time you spend there, and not on the amount you consume.
Who are Future Artists
Future Artists are an award winning media collective of artists, business leaders and activists – Winner of the 2012 ‘Best Venue in the North’ GQ Magazine for the Black Lion in Salford.
Future Artists Live Creative Co-op was formed in 2010 as an Industrial Provenance Society – a social enterprise co-op where the community benefits from the profits – controlled by members, not shareholders.
This Co-op and the experience of the members is what will make this business and its laudable aims a success.
After the success of our 18 month residency at the Black Lion from September 2011 to January 2013 – where we created a theatre, cinema and production space for 5 creative companies and hosted over 100 productions, 4 festivals as well as running the pub’s kitchen; the triumph of creating the ‘Honesty Cafe’ concept for global ideas festival ‘FutureEverything’ in March 2013, and also creating the BBC featured ‘Stewy – Northern Souls’ street art exhibition at Manchester’s Great Northern in December 2013, we felt it was about time that we found our own space, in the greatest city in the world, Manchester.
What are we about to do.
In October 2013 – Future Artists was approached by the Royal Society of Arts to take part in a Kickstarter for a project of our choice – this Kickstarter would be supported by 23,000 fellows, a full media package and numerous other benefits – and so it was decided to put a plan into action.
The project is being developed by the ’Future Artists Live Creative Co-op’ as a not for profit community co-op venture, which means, if you help build it, you will benefit directly from it.
The Future Artists Live Creative Co-op is run by a board, nominated by its membership – with any profits derived by activities going into the community chest to be spent on its members and also on projects nominated by them.
Established in 2010, in its first year it attracted over 50 members, generating over £11,000 which was spent on educational events and the upskilling of the community in addition to buying equipment such as a PA system, chairs and PR materials and the co-ops members also helped build the Black Lions cinema and theatre spaces.
The board members also helped create co-ops in Uganda and Lagos Nigeria, and members have since formed their own workers co-ops, ran as social enterprise business to benefit their local communities.
Future Artists are looking forward to telling the world about this radical new way of transforming high-streets around the UK, generating capital for education, health and idea’s
What are we proposing
Home of Future Artists Manchester has been 5 years in the planning, and the conditions are right for a new type of high street destination experience to emerge.
Located in Manchester’s designer boutique district of Kings Street, surrounded by grade A office buildings and high end designer boutiques, Future Artists propose to build a flag ship artisan coffee house and venue space, ran as a Charity / co-op for the greater good of the wider area, where all the profits generated are distributed to arts, health and educational projects in the surrounding 30 mile radius of the space. We estimate that between £100,000 and £120,000 worth of grants will be made available at the end of year two.
The Home of Future Artists Manchester, will be the first of 10 such creative hubs that will be located at the heart of towns and cities across the UK, creating jobs, training, a meeting space for ideas and a wealth creator for grants and loans to individuals and community projects.
Manchester will be the flag ship hub space and be tailored as a destination space, attracting custom from the cities retail and office workers, shoppers, tourists and the creative freelance community. It will also be comprised of a strong membership base.
This venture is unique in a variety of ways.
Situated in a prime city centre location with a rich and vibrant history, our artisan coffee shop and art space will provide and unprecedented customer experience.
We are giving customers the chance to VOTE WITH YOUR BREW, giving them the opportunity to spend their money with a positive, transparent and community-facing organisation.
We will sell our own rich blend of coffee from the best free trade bean source’s and curated tea selection, with home-made soups and an artisan selection of hot and cold foods influenced from the best of the worlds street foods, which will offer an affordable lunch time treat to shoppers and city workers alike.
The ground floor coffee shop space will be a relaxing escape from the city streets, with comfortable sofas for families and friends, single occupancy spaces and nooks to escape in – all this within the confines of a curated art gallery space with a small and unique retail experience.
The ground floor will stock a selection of Manchester’s best independent record label’s releases on vinyl and CD, with gig tickets available from the kiosk in addition to limited edition prints, cards and original artworks in the space.
In addition to our curated art space and artisan coffee experience our 1st floor will be a flexible co-working space during the day for the cities tech and creative freelance community, which will be based in an innovative pay by the minute space.
This 1st floor hub space, will entitle the user to clock in and use the space, comprising of tables, power points wifi, printers, plasma screens and meeting spaces for 5p per minute, per person, this will include tea, coffee and snacks and will also be staffed by a Future Artists host. This truly innovative idea will give the cities freelancers a creative and co-working environment without the pressure to purchase beverages and take up space.
After 6pm this co-working upstairs area is transformed into a creative space for the expansion of the mind, body and spirit of the cities work force, with a variety of classes and workshops in Yoga, Acting, Music, Art and entrepreneurship.
This 1st floor space and the ground floor space will also be used for a variety of events, theatre shows, film screenings and pop up art and music shows curated by the hub spaces co-op membership.
How we are going to do this
The Home of Future Artists Manchester, works on a simple business model, which can be replicated as a franchise model across multiple sites.
Our aim is to make £1000 per day from the ground floor site, based on 200 sales at £5 – with each of these sales based on the purchase of a beverage and a sandwhich.
This will give us an average turn over of £7000 per week / £364,000 per annum – we expect capital costs, stock and staff to account for around 60% of the take in the first year. After capital loans are paid back, we expect to retain 50% of annual profits – which will be distributed in the local community as enterprise grants via the charity Forever Manchester.
In year 2 we expect to reduce costs and have a more efficiently run business and with no start up costs or loans, then the increase in profits can be spent on rolling out other sites and also an increase in grants to our co-op and local communities.
In addition to the ground floor operation – revenues will also be generated from the following:
- Sales of Artworks in the ground floor space at 30% commission
- Retail sales of Music CDS, Vinyl and tickets at an agreed rate.
- Retail sales of Prints, cards, postcards
- Outside catering operation
- Event space hire
- Ticket splits on 1st floor Theatre, Film and other events
- Dry hire of the Theatre / Film space
- Co-working space at 5p per minute
We would expect the 1st floor operation to bring in around £52,000 per annum through a variety of activities – creating a ‘Host’ position for an event manager to run this space.
Start up capital required is being budgeted, but are currently estimated at £30,000 for start up and cash flow of wages during the ‘build’ phase 1 and 2.
£3000 of this will come from a grant from the Royal Society of Arts, and £5000 will be crowd funded via a Royal Society of Arts Kickstarter – We will also run a variety of fundraising activities to raise £2000 – this will leave us with a short fall of £20,000 which will seeking from start up loans and further grants.
The project will be ran in phases: SUBJECT TO CHANGE
Phase 1 – KICKSTARTER PHASE 24TH FEB: will see the upstairs Co-working space created, this along with 1 host position, will make the building operational – downstairs will be fitted out with a curated art gallery
Phase 2 – (April) will see the fit out of the downstairs space and upstairs co-working space and a black box style theatre, a fully fitted out artisan coffee shop and art gallery, with signage and POS, stock, management and staff
Phase 3 – (June) Will see the fit out of a projector and screen on both levels, and audio conference facilities – along with expansion on toilets and cosmetics.
Phase 4 – (August 2014) will be a review of the current projects, and how to build other units in new sites.