Nick van Breeman, the founder of Moose Coffee, has told M&C the company is launching two new concepts – a grab-and-go and an evening offer – and is in talks to take the brand to Dubai.
The company is set to open Moose & Moonshine at a site in Liverpool’s Hope Street which they have owned for two years. It will be based around the Canadian staple of poutine, which van Breeman described as “posh chips and gravy” and will focus on premium alcohol imports. Van Breeman hopes it will be the first UK venue to serve Moose Drool – a craft beer from Montana.
Meanwhile, the company’s first grab-and-go will launch at Manchester’s Piccadilly station, focussing on sandwiches and the company’s signature pancakes. As part of the move the original three stores will be rebranded simply as Moose, with the grab and go format taking the Moose Coffee moniker.
Separately van Breeman is in talks to open a Moose unit in Dubai, however he stressed this was at a “very early stage”.
Moose & Moonshine will open early next month in area which van Breeman said is earmarked as Liverpool’s next cultural quarter.
He said: “We don’t make things easy for ourselves and we tend to move quite slowly – we have had this site for two years. But now everything seems to be happening all at once. The benefit of taking so much time is we have been able to look at every aspect of this and get it exactly right.”
On the inspiration for Moon & Moonshine, he said: “We had developed this American/Canadian focus for Moose and we were keen to develop that for evening trade. We didn’t want to go down the smokehouse or burger route because we felt that was a bit over-saturated now.
“Then we hit on the idea of basing it around Poutine, which is not very well known over here but is a great food to match with beer. It has to be done right – home-made chips and maple based gravy. Alongside that we have a French food element so the other side of the menu will be built around aligot, which again is something quite simple – mashed potatoes but it’s 80% gruyere cheese. Very calorific and luxurious. That will be a topping to steak or chicken of frito misto.”
On the Dubai possibility he said: “It came completely out of the blue. They were aware of the brand and asked us if we would be interested in going out there. We are in discussions at the moment. There are cultural differences so there are things we would need to change but it’s definitely something to explore.”
Van Breeman said the immediate growth plans are to have a base of 10 stores in the north before rolling out to the rest of the country. He said growth to date had been self-funded and said there were no immediate plans to seek investment for domestic expansion.
