Chris Moyles promised to buy listeners breakfast at a Manchester cafe if they turned up during the show on Friday morning.
The Chris Moyles Show was broadcasting from the Global offices in the city after going rogue during yesterday’s Dump Truck run.
Dominic Byrne and producer James Robinson joined the team at the cafe to help serve breakfast as it was inundated with listeners.
Speaking on his Radio X show at around 7:30am, Chris told listeners: “We thought we would find a lovely little breakfast place in Manchester city centre and for anybody who’s listening in the show that works in Manchester city centre, we’ll buy you breakfast.”
Producer James went to scout out Essy’s after a listener recommendation, and Chris invited listeners to go down and enjoy a breakfast butty on the Radio X tab. The first listeners turned up within 4 minutes of Chris revealing the destination live on air, with the show crossing live to the café throughout the morning to speak to owner Shakeela Majeed, Manager Claire Smith and their customers.
Listeners travelled from around the city – with one even jumping in the car and making the trip from Liverpool – to visit Essy’s and enjoy some breakfast on Radio X’s tab.
Owner Shakeela Majeed told The Chris Moyles Show on Radio X team how the pandemic had affected the business, and what this morning’s visit from Radio X had been like: “This was an establishment with a queue outside at lunchtime. Jacket potatoes, sandwiches, bacon butties, that sort of thing, and the workforce doesn’t look like it’s all coming back.
“We’re about 30% of what we were with the workforce so we’ve had to literally redesign our whole business model. We’ve had to go on to opening at weekends, opening in the evenings, delivery systems etc. We’ve only got through with no.1) government help and no.2) working night and day to make the place survive and I think that’s generally what everyone else is like in the city centre, small businesses and cafes and restaurants like us.
“This morning has been excellent. For us, this has put us back on the map. Thank you for choosing us, thank you for giving us this opportunity, we really appreciate it!”
Manager Claire Smith added: “A lot of people have found us today that I’ve never seen before. I know all our customers really, I’m here early in the morning and I finish late the afternoon – I know everybody and everybody knows me. But today I didn’t know anybody that came in. Hopefully we’ll see people again, you know that have come in today, I know it’s a free sandwich, but hopefully they’ll come back.”
The radio competition saw The Chris Moyles Show team personally deliver a van’s worth of incredible prizes to winners homes throughout this week.
Each winner was selected at random on that morning’s show, meaning the team had absolutely no idea where they’d be travelling to to “dump” that day’s prizes. Throughout the week, the team travelled to Northolt in West London, Oxford, Crowborough in East Sussex, and were due to deliver prizes to the final winner in Hainault (East London) but decided to “go rogue” after the London-based winner had to attend a meeting so couldn’t be home to receive his prizes.
The team decided to take a trip to Manchester for a night out, broadcasting this morning’s show from Radio X’s Manchester studio, and will deliver the prizes to the London winner today.
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Posted on Friday, September 17th, 2021 at 2:00 pm by RadioToday Staff