The House Of Books And Friends CIC

House of Books & Friends is an independent bookshop, café and events space in the centre of Manchester with the sole purpose of tackling loneliness and social isolation in all its forms. The three main revenue streams all work in conjunction with each other to provide a safe, welcoming and fully inclusive space where people can meet, form connections and relationships, largely through their love of books. The café provides a reason for people to linger and talk to one another, our Chatty Café table being a popular addition. Our team of ‘Bookworms’ are all recruited and trained to be particularly friendly and chatty and we aim to be over staffed to enable our team to have the time to have real conversations and build connections, which they have with many customers. Throughout the year we have delivered monthly book clubs with variations online, in the evening and afternoon, enabling people to take part from a range of backgrounds i.e. parents attending online due to lack of childcare. These have proved and continue to be very popular with us adding a children’s book club in 2024. Our Coffee and Connections campaign was launched in 2024, where customers can sign up to meet new people. We match people based on their interests and arrange for them to meet at a convenient time where we provide the coffee, and they provide the conversation. We made over 100 connections, a number of who went on to meet again and form friendships. We provided a friendly face on arrival, talking points and notes around safety and sharing details etc. We offer pay it forward mechanisms across each part of the business, with the café’s pay it forward coffee proving particularly popular, customers are also able to pay forward a book which is donated to a charity connection and people hiring our event space can pay it forward for a community group to use the space for free. We have also partnered with a range of charities who have a similar mission, allowing them to use the space for free to further their own aims, the Greater Manchester Bereavement Service have hosted monthly drop in sessions enabling service users to access support in a city centre location.