Ravenous: independent cafe provision in Preston

Another of the independent entries carried over, and part of the same street pattern.

Ravenous is an independent cafe entry in Preston, in the city centre's independent food and drink streets.

Its setting is the one the cafes sheet sets out: Winckley Street, the blocks between Fishergate and the markets, and the arcade units.

No claim is made about current trading. Independent food businesses turn over faster than any other kind, so an entry here describes a place and a location, and never a going concern.

The daytime trade is the strong half

Daytime trade is also the part of the food business a city of this size can actually keep. A weekday centre with offices, a college and a market generates the same footfall every morning whether or not anyone plans an evening out, and a business that trades on that is not competing with the restaurant picture at all. It is a different trade in the same streets.

Cafes are the part of Preston's food trade where the independents hold the ground, and that is the opposite of the evening restaurant picture. A compact commercial centre with heavy weekday footfall and comparatively low rents on the side streets is a good environment for an owner-operated daytime business, and the city has a real concentration of them.

Where they sit

The pattern is side streets, never the main shopping frontage — the streets running off Fishergate and around the market quarter, where the rent drops sharply within fifty metres of the primary retail pitch. Walking one street back from the main run is the single most useful piece of advice for finding this category.

What is nearby

A central cafe puts the markets, the Harris and Winckley Square within a few minutes' walk, and the Victorian parks a few minutes beyond that. The centre is small enough that none of it needs planning.

The chains hold the primary retail frontage; the independents are one street back, where the rent drops. That is the whole geography of this category in Preston.