New cafe aiming to bring slice of the Mediterranean to Wolverhampton city centre
A newly opened cafe is aiming to bring the tastes and sounds of the Mediterranean to Wolverhampton city centre.
Loco Coffee opened three weeks ago on Cleveland Street in Wolverhampton, next to the entrance to the Wulfrun Centre on the site of the former Bag Shop by Alan Nadir, who has owned and run the neighbouring Loco Hair Style hairdressers since 2001.
The interior of Loco Coffee has been styled on a cafe which might be found in Istanbul or along the Mediterranean Sea, full of tiled walls, brown and black wood-effect and leather padded seats.
It also has a coffee menu which features strong Turkish coffee and other types of tea and coffee not found in regular coffee shops, plus homemade cakes and meals which use ingredients bought from the nearby Wolverhampton Market.
Mr Nadir said he had bought the Bag Shop and turned it into a cafe as he wanted to bring the sort of coffee shop that might be found in London or Birmingham to his home city.
He said: "To be honest, the reason I opened the cafe was to bring something different to the city as you can go to most cities across the UK and they have nice enough shops, but I don't think they have anything like this.
"What I would like to do is bring a new atmosphere to the city and a new type of experience, with the Turkish coffee and the cakes and tea and food all being different to what you would get elsewhere and make it a unique place."
Mr Nadir said the idea for the place had come up as he was running his hairdressers and found that people were sitting around a lot, so thought it might be a good idea to open a place where they could have a coffee while they waited.
He said that people had slowly been getting used to seeing the place and more and more people were coming in, but he was keen to sell the concept of the cafe as a place to relax as well as a place to work and was looking at being able to stay open longer.
He said: "I'd like to see more people come in and use it as a place to have a meeting or just to come and relax in, so they can come in and do whatever they like.
"We do something which is unique here as we want to bring something you can get in London to my city, sort of like bringing Oxford Street to Cleveland Street.
"We have plans to open for longer and we are applying to do that, so that we can provide a place where you could come, have a glass of wine and either stay with us or start here and go onwards.
"I would say to anyone who wants to come down to do so. Come and try our unique food and drink and we do it our way, with everything being unique."
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