Preston Guild City

Cafes in Preston: the independent streets and the park cafes

The strongest part of the city's food offer, and the one that grew in exactly the streets retail left.

Coffee is the part of Preston's food trade that has done best, and the reason is structural, not cultural. Independent coffee needs a small unit, a low rent and passing footfall, which is precisely the combination the streets behind the high street offer and the high street itself does not.

So the coffee trade filled the units that retail vacated, and the map of good coffee in Preston is now more or less the map of nineteenth century small commercial units.

Round cafe tables photographed from above on a patterned stone floor, customers seated around them with newspapers
Fig. 01 — tables on a patterned floor, seen from the gallery above

The small-unit streets

Winckley Street and the blocks between Fishergate and the markets carry most of it. These are streets of narrow nineteenth century plots, which produce exactly the size of room an independent cafe can afford to fill.

Miller Arcade belongs to the same category, and its units are the smallest in the centre. Walking through it is the quickest survey of what kind of small trade the city currently supports.

The market units

The Market Hall carries prepared food and drink in fixed units, which makes it the most reliable indoor coffee stop in the centre and the busiest at lunchtime. It is enclosed, which matters in Lancashire.

The outdoor market ground under the 1870s canopy is covered but not enclosed, so it is dry, and never warm. That distinction is worth knowing in January.

The park cafes

A cafe inside a park does a different job from one on a street: it is the thing that turns a one-hour walk into a two-hour outing, and it is the reason families settle into a park and stop merely crossing it.

The Pavilion in Avenham Park is the example on this site. The other municipal parks have provision of their own, and it varies; the parks and gardens sheet describes the parks themselves, and not their catering.

How this sheet names places

A small number of cafes carry their own reference entries here. The rest of the trade is described by street rather than named, which is the honest level of detail for a trade where a room changes hands without changing its frontage. The entries that exist record what each place is and where it sits.

No menu, no price, no trading claim.

The honest state of the coffee scene

Preston's coffee is good for a city of its size and it is concentrated in a walkable area. It is not a destination scene in the way Manchester's or Leeds's is, and it does not need to be described as one.

What it is is a genuine local improvement over the last fifteen years, driven by cheap small units in a compact centre. That is a more interesting fact about the city than any individual cafe.

Where to walk for it

The efficient route is Fishergate, south into Winckley Street, through Winckley Square, back up and east through the arcade to the market site. Forty minutes, and it passes almost all of the independent trade.

Extending it down into Avenham Park adds the park provision and the river, and makes a two-hour outing out of a coffee walk.

Why the arcade units matter

Miller Arcade deserves a second mention here because its units are a specific size that almost nothing else in Preston offers: too small for a chain, big enough for one trader and a counter. That is the exact size of room an independent coffee business needs, and it is why arcades across the north west have filled with them.

It also means the arcade is worth walking through for reasons beyond the tilework. The trade in it is the most current signal available of what kind of small business the city is supporting this year.

Coffee and the student population

The other structural factor is UCLan, immediately north of the centre. A large student population changes the daytime economy of the streets between the campus and Fishergate, and the coffee trade on that side reflects it.

Friargate is the clearest example. Its character is set by the campus at its northern end, and never by the shopping street at its southern one, and the food and drink there is priced and formatted accordingly.

Cafes and restaurants with an entry of their own

A small number of cafes and restaurants carry a reference entry of their own, because they come up often enough in their own right to be worth a page.

Questions about Cafes in Preston

Where are the independent cafes in Preston?

In the small-unit streets behind the high street: Winckley Street, the blocks between Fishergate and the markets, and Miller Arcade, whose units are the smallest in the centre.

Why has independent coffee done well in Preston?

Structurally, not culturally: independent coffee needs a small unit, a low rent and passing footfall, which is what the streets behind the high street offer and the high street does not.

Is there a cafe in Preston's parks?

Yes, and a park cafe does a different job from a street one — it turns a one-hour walk into a two-hour outing. The Pavilion in Avenham Park carries its own entry here.