Idle Hands sells coffee, pie and food in Manchester’s Northern Quarter. It is a coffee shop that makes its own pies, has a kitchen serving brunch, and sells natural wine and craft beer to drink in or take away. It was established in 2014 and first popped up by Manchester Piccadilly station in early 2015. After about three months there the floor opened up, and the shop spent a nomadic sixteen months in temporary set-ups before finding its permanent home at Dale House in the Northern Quarter, “the super happy, really long, final chapter”.
Idle Hands takes its coffee seriously, likes to keep it interesting and prides itself on having no house roaster. The espresso rotates through different roasters, and a regularly rotating brew bar serves filter coffees from roasters around the world. Coffee, for Idle Hands, is a fresh crop that can taste many different ways and a conversation the shop wants to be part of, for people who enjoy discussing and researching coffee as much as drinking it. It is not there to preach. It wants every drink to be consistently special, and if one is not, it wants to know. The same ethos runs through the baking, the food, the wine and the service.
The counter carries a daily selection of sweet pies and cakes: a vegan cherry pie, a pecan pie and a chocolate cream pie sit among salted caramel apple, cookie dough, Biscoff, banana cream and vegan salted chocolate. The kitchen serves brunch, and gift cards are sold online.
Idle Hands does not roast and has no single supplier. The roasters on the grinder and the brew bar change.
Photograph: Idle Hands