‘All the bars and clubs in Manchester were about bling, fake tan and £70 bottles of vodka... then we arrived’

Jonny Heyes isn’t one for nostalgia. So naturally, he’s putting on a series of events to mark 20 years since he opened his first bar in the Northern Quarter.

No really, he doesn’t like to look too far back. But, to tell the story of Common, you really do have to rewind to the halcyon days of 2004.

Located on Edge Street, the ‘perfect neighbourhood bar’ as one of its regulars has described it, was decked out with an olive green exterior, chipboard-style bar front and murals on the wall.

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It was pretty tiny really - but that’s what its regulars liked about it. And it wasn’t trying too hard either.

There were regular club nights, lots of late nights and something very ‘hedonistic’ about it as Jonny recalls.

He set the bar up on a shoestring with co-founder Chris Stevenson who stayed with the business until around 2009. It was around this time that Charlotte, Johnny's wife, joined the fold.

Since then, the pair have become key figures in Manchester’s food and drink scene. Port Street Beer House, Common, The Pilcrow and Indy Man Beer Con have all been steered by them and shaped the nightlife sector as we know it today.

“When we started we didn’t really have a sign at all,” recalls Charlotte.

“It was a bit like cocktail bars are now or that restaurant Louis in Spinningfields where they cover your camera. But that was almost the point really - if you wanted to go to Common, you almost had to find it because there wasn’t any social media.”

“You would also happily work on the bar because it was like a night out and all your mates would be here.”

Jonny adds that in the early days things were also a lot more ad hoc.

“We were young, stupid and idealistic. Because we had worked for hospitality before we didn’t think we needed to follow their rules and for a while it worked.

“The whole premise was opening somewhere we wanted to go. It was never that business focused.

“We took an almost minimalist approach because at the time everywhere was quite blingy, quite aspirational and lots of fake tan.

“There were lots of ‘let's buy a bottle of vodka for £70 and put it on the table’. It was very showy and we tried to do the opposite, it was an antidote to bar culture at the time.

“I could also be so crap at running a business and survive,” he says half joking.

The bar was also responsible for some very very popular nights. “Saturday was called ‘Best Foot Forward’ with Mark Schloes and Kev Macguire. Kev worked in Piccadilly Records and it was packed in here for a good 4-5 years because of what they were doing.”

There were the legendary Halloween events too where everybody - including the owners - would go to town in their outfits. “I dyed my hair black so I could do Kiss but it was semi-permanent and I had to grow it out,” laughs Jonny.

And while Common is now home to Nell’s, their hit New York-style pizza concept that’s been rolled out across Greater Manchester, those who attended in the early days still pine for some of Jonny's earlier dishes.

“We did some very basic stuff, it was a bit provisional. We made beans on toast and chicken and chorizo stew. And then when we started doing burgers and got a fryer so we could cook chips.”

“There were three toasties too,” remembers Charlotte counting off the different options on her fingers. “There was meatball and mozzarella, chicken and pesto and brie and cranberry, pretty basic really but it was one of those and a pint for a fiver.”

It was Jonny’s vegetable and beef chilli that many punters remember fondly though. And for those still desperate for one more hit, this week they’re bringing it back. For one final hurrah they’ll be serving it up on one of their pizzas with a central reservation of nachos until October 27.

If chilli was the starting point, pizza is most definitely the future. And along with a refurbishment of Common in 2015 - which some of the early adopters were not best pleased about - Jonny and Charlotte have always been keen to keep moving the bar - and now Nells too - forward.

“There’s a lot of nostalgia around this place,” smiles Jonny as we sit down ahead of the anniversary. “I’m ok with it but I’m also not, so that’s why we changed it ten years ago.

“It was fun while it lasted, but I didn’t want Common to become a relic. You know it was great, we had an amazing time in the first ten years but those first people moved out to the suburbs and had kids and don’t really come anymore.

“People used to come here and get very drunk and we had some amazing nights. And then the later night trade started to wane a bit, so that 12-2pm crowd disappeared. We saw which way the wind was blowing and realised food would help and not just booze.”

Nell’s, Common’s popular food concept spanning 14-inch and 22-inch pizzas, will open its fifth spot in the coming weeks in Altrincham. It serves both Common and The Beagle in Chorlton and has its own standalone site at the Kampus neighbourhood, and its Altrincham and second city site will open soon.

Cooked up by Jonny before the pandemic, the venue at Kampus was already secured but wasn’t the main focus. They had planned to open the site as a pub with a pizza shop attached, but Covid changed all that, and the founders say it turned out to be a bit of a ‘lifeboat’ for them.

“We’ve always been passionate about baking like when we shared a flat in town we baked sourdough and talked about opening a bakery,” says Jonny.

“When the Netflix programme Ugly Delicious was on I must have watched the pizza episode so many times. I started making it at home and experimenting then bumped into Jim Morgan of Rudy's’ and we got to know each other, and told him I wanted to do a pizza thing - not Neapolitan, wood-fired or anything like that, more New York-style where they use bakery ovens and it’s much slower.

“We got together and would make dough. Put a pizza oven in the basement here and would basically meet up and make pizza. Though he wasn’t really meant to be helping anyone else.

“Then when Covid hit there was some rapid decision making, we had everything ready, logo and recipes done and week one Charlotte said don’t spend anything but I got the pizza oven and that was our lifeboat.

“I don’t really like to look back too much because it was an awful time, and you lose track of the fact that every day or week we had to change what we were doing completely. 14 inch pizzas were never intended but it was so we could do delivery."

During Covid, Common and Nell's specifically hit headlines when police told the owners to stop serving slices of 22-inch pizza as they didn’t class as a ‘substantial meal’ under the Tier 3 lockdown rules. As well as ever-changing rules and regulations businesses like Common had to deal with local lockdowns announced late at night on Twitter, strict curfews, and many other complicated safety measures introduced to the sector.

Though Jonny described it back in early 2021 as a ‘non-stop grind’, they did find their way through and continued to do what they do best - adapt with the times.

“Because we were small we could pivot and be nimble,” says Charlotte.

“In lockdown Jonny developed the ice-cream sandwiches from home. It was very much a speedboat and tanker situation that worked in our favour.

“Pre-Covid we had Common Beagle and Port Street and Pilcrow all with separate menus so it’s hard to do anything with that. So in a way it was almost looking further down the road and making a better business and being more sustainable too."

Nell's is named after Jonny and Charlotte's three children - Edith, Lennie and Nell - (as well as being the same name as their daughter it spells out the initials of the kids) and is also a nod to Jonny's grandmother Nelly. So it has a lot of special meaning for them as a family that has grown up alongside Common and now its in-house pizzeria.

"It's also the name of the bar in the film American Psycho," pips in Jonny, making sure to keep things light. As is his and Charlotte's way, they're very humble about Common, its success and its ability to change with the times.

“If we had run it properly, it would have been an amazing business, but as it was we had a lot of fun," he smiles. "I’m very thankful we made a business at a time when you could make a lot of mistakes and not be completely punished for it.

“The whole point is we want people to come and have something nice to eat and drink, see their friends and go home happy. That’s always been the philosophy since day one.

"Now we’re bigger, it's important it’s trading well, we have to be the boring people making the decisions. Even in the early days we had to keep moving though.

"If you’re going to be a business that lasts you have to move on and adapt."