New owners bring new look and feel to familiar Saddleworth business

NEW owners mean a new look for a familiar Saddleworth establishment – after falling in love with how it was.

Phil Allingan and wife Lisa may be the ‘names above the door’ at Uppermill’s Caffe Grande Abaco, on High Street.

But being in there is nothing strange. They were regular customers.

So when it went on the market, there was little hesitation in buying it, even though Phil had never worked in the hospitality industry.

“I’d never done that before, other than as a customer,” said the man who lives in Lydgate and owns a tax advice business, as well as part-owning a car body shop and doing consultancy work for a recruitment firm.

“Lisa and I had been coming here for years, since it opened. We looked at it from a customer point of view, really.

“And that’s how we approach running it now. When it came up for sale, I looked at it and thought, ‘Ooh, that would be interesting.’

“Within 10 days, we ended up buying it. But the main reason was because I knew that all the staff were good and they’d run it on a day-to-day basis. Mark runs the kitchen and Enzo front-of-house.

“I do come down every day, but it might be for five minutes, it might be for five hours. I just leave them to it, really.”

Phil and Lisa have already made his mark on Abaco. A complete redesign of the premises, particularly the ground floor, gives customers a very different view as they walk in.

But building a pile of money is definitely not the motivation for taking the business on – keeping it in the family is.

Staff will also be pounding up and down stairs less and the familiar outside area has also been made more weatherproof – which comes in handy as Saddleworth is not exactly known for long, hot summers.

Phil added: “We didn’t buy it to make a load of money,

“But we bought it more because we’ve got quite a few children ourselves. We bought it as a family business, as well as an investment.

“And because we had some ideas of doing what we’ve done to it, and spoke to the previous owner Nigel Skinkis, we get on really well.

“He had other people looking at it but when I told him what we wanted to do with it, he said, ‘I want it to go to somebody like a family that’s local.’

“It was on four floors and we had a kitchen on the ground floor, with another upstairs, and some bits on the menu were done from one, some were done from the other.

“Staff were running up and down four floors and there wasn’t much seating on this ground level. There were two bars, but there were six chairs, three tables of two and if the outside was windy and raining, you couldn’t use the outside.

“So if the weather wasn’t good, on the ground floor, you had six seats. We said, ‘If we get more on the ground floor, then there’s less running about for staff.’

“There were a lot of customers that couldn’t get upstairs – they had prams or they’re not that able to.

“We said, ‘If we can make the outside more weatherproof,’ which we’ve done, with the new canopy. So from six chairs on the ground floor, we’ve got 90 now.

“There’s one big new kitchen, rather than two, to make it more efficient for the staff, make the staff’s life easier, and also make it better for customers.”

It may have been all smiles as Phil and Lisa’s ideas were unveiled at an event on Tuesday, June 10, and the results are impressive.

But do not think it was all smiles. Changing one of the most familiar names in Saddleworth is harder work than you may think.

Phil told Saddleworth Independent: “I don’t enjoy that process, not at all.