Who is Soho House Manchester for?

Good morning Millers! Allow us — like a Soho House bouncer – to briefly stop you at the door of Jack's feature taking a look inside Manchester's newest member's club. The latest episode of our podcast is out now.

In it, Jacks Dulhanty and Walton discuss our latest ding-dong with the MEN over it paywalling publicly funded journalism; the exodus of staff at HOME; and our recent piece on the Gorton and Denton by-election. Then they take a look at the other runners and riders vying for the seat, and discuss what they're hearing from campaigners on the ground.

You can listen wherever you get your podcasts here, or at the Spotify player below.

Stout, heavy lamps dot marble tables scattered with half-empty martinis and unfinished steaks. Olympic Champion Keely Hodgkinson glides through a room so dim people are using their iPhone torches to read the menu. On low-slung couches by the bar are DJ collective Girls Don’t Sync. A man at a nearby table takes the lamp from its centre and unsmilingly starts to bicep curl it. I order a drink and someone asks for my membership code. It’s Friday night at Soho House Manchester.

When Soho House – a private membership club for creatives – was founded in 1995, its very essence was entwined with London’s. The first club on Greek Street in Soho opened when that part of the city was still a seedy enclave of sex shops and brothels. It grew into a luxury brand, with outposts all over the capital, as well as in Somerset, Sussex, Oxfordshire, and pretty much every major city in the world: New York, Hong Kong, Mexico City. Two months ago, some 25 years after opening its doors on Greek Street, Soho House finally ventured where it had never gone before: the north of England.

When the news first broke in 2021, it was ridiculed. Not by snooty London-types paling at the thought of going beyond the M25, instead it was Mancunians that balked. Soho House – with its £1,925 annual fee – was elitist, and Manchester was not. It didn’t fit the vibe of the city, we didn’t need it, it wasn’t us. It was slated to open in 2022, but construction issues repeatedly delayed its arrival. The cynics all but rejoiced every time a new, later opening date was announced.

“I’m a massive, massive skeptic of whether that will work in Manchester,” business journalist Michael Taylor said in one video a few months back. “No one in Manchester who is very rich is cool. And no one who is cool has a lot of money.” Taylor claimed that, historically, private members clubs have simply never worked in Manchester. Taylor evidently had low hopes for our latest arrival. “That’s the theory,” he explained — Soho House would likely fail in Manchester.  “I’m willing to be proven wrong”.

Well two months ago, it finally opened. So how has it all been going?