00:00If we're talking about food places that are massively important to Manchester's culture,
00:04the place behind me, Federal, is just that.
00:06This is one of three of their locations,
00:08and I want to speak to the owner about what makes it such a success and why Manchester.
00:12Federal is a cafe in Manchester that's loosely based on similar spaces in Australia and New Zealand.
00:18So I wanted to sit down and speak to owner Claudio Ribeiro
00:21to understand what it is about Manchester that makes it such a desirable place to set up shop
00:25and why Australian-themed.
00:28I just thought that the way they did those things in Australia and New Zealand
00:33would be a bit different from the UK.
00:35The quality of the coffee, the quality of the service.
00:37That's what makes us Australian, or Aussie.
00:40I think that the quality of the service you get when you come in,
00:43the friendly staff, and then the quality of the food,
00:46the consistency of it, and then the speciality coffee.
00:50It isn't just the Tim Tams and the Vegemite that make this Australian.
00:53As Claudio says, it's the service.
00:55And who he hires to work there is of massive importance.
00:58And that's the key for Federal and the key for anything we do.
01:01We have to make sure that the staff is as friendly as they can be.
01:05They need to like to work with people.
01:07So our approach has to be quite genuine and not just forced.
01:10They go out together, they have friendships.
01:12We have couples that came out of Federal.
01:14We have couples that have babies now that came out of meeting the Federal.
01:18So we recruit people that are very like-minded and they get along with each other.
01:23Now this video is about food, and it's something that Federal do brilliantly.
01:27But their menu hasn't really changed much, and Claudio says that consistency is key.
01:31Actually, the menu stayed pretty much the same since we opened.
01:34We have a really good chef that helped us to create the menu.
01:37He just arrived from Australia at the time in 2014,
01:40so he kind of was fresh and full of ideas on how to put the menu together.
01:45And then we've been lucky enough to work with loads and loads of good chefs
01:48that have tweaked the menu to what it is today.
01:50But the menu kind of stayed the same pretty much the last 10 years, actually.
01:55Two dishes that people order the most, which is the French toast,
01:58which is the most popular, and the other one is halloumi shrimps.
02:01We bake our own cakes, so we bake our own cakes in-house.
02:05So all the cakes that you see here come from our store on the other side of town.
02:11So why Manchester?
02:12Well, according to Claudio, there's a couple of reasons.
02:15But chief amongst them is the community that they're bringing out,
02:17particularly across businesses in the northern quarter.
02:21I have really good relationships with people that run coffee places like I do.
02:28I get along really well with the guys from DKB.
02:31I get along with the guys that run sports down in Deansgate,
02:34which is a major coffee down there.
02:37I do think that we make sure that we are exchanging information
02:42about what's happening in town.
02:43And what we should really be doing is taking people away from the big chains.
02:47Manchester is full of amazing places.
02:49And I think that's what people come to live in Manchester,
02:52but they also want to be here and just stay.
02:54And the city just grows with everything that happens.
02:56For Manchester World, from Federal, I'm Theo Hewson-Betts.
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