Jonathan Downey
@DowneyJD
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Previously Milk & Honey + Giant Robot + Dinerama + Hawker House + Model Market. Currently working on some new stuff.
London
Joined April 2011
Why is Gareth Southgate still England manager when there are so many blokes on Twitter who know how to do his job much better than he does? 🙄.
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It’s astonishing what some people will do for others. Wonderful.
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Twitter this week:. 1. Trump.2. Brexit.3. Piers Morgan is a dick .4. A dog did something funny.5. A baby did something adorable.6. A celebrity I’ve never heard of did something I don’t care about.7. Someone is upset.8. Everyone is angry.9. No one cares.10. Food.
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Has anyone ever recovered a stolen iPhone/iPad using the Find My Phone app? . My iPad was stolen from Shoreditch on Friday and I’ve been following it’s adventures today. It started out on a park bench in the grounds of St Leonard’s church and then went to Mikkeller for a pint.
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This is Milk & Honey in Soho. A very special place 18yrs old last week. It’s been the ‘World’s Best Bar’ and the making of many great bartenders, but we may never re-open. Annual rent is £200,000 but our landlord won’t allow any deferral/rent free. Expects full payment upfront.🤨
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What's very clear in the aftermath of the vote to Leave is that none of the politicians, analysts and experts has a clue WTF happens next.🤔.
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Never in human history have so many graphs been used so often to explain so little to so many.
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RIP Milk & Honey London (April 2002 - September 2020). The first recorded case of a business dying of curfew. Thank you to all the brilliant people who’ve worked there and to all the lovely guests we looked after.
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It’s easy to forget when there is so much I-told-you-so from so many know-it-alls but, before its more recent struggles, Jamie’s Italian lasted 11yrs, created thousands of jobs for young people, turned over £750m and was profitable. Restaurants are hard.
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And here it is. Back where it belongs, with me. It still had 37% battery life and was unscathed after a six day staycation in Shoreditch. Thank f•ck for that.
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Hello Rob. Apologies for pissing on your popular tweet but I think you might have got that slightly wrong. Gary drives a Mini Electric 3 door hatch.
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Coming to terms with the fact that my iPad may not have been stolen but has left me for a better life in a more central London location. 😕.
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So hats off to @Apple for the brilliant battery life (you don’t hear that very often) and high five to whoever it was that created this remarkable App.👏. I didn’t get the homeless guy’s name and he was a bit flummoxed by the whole thing but he was fine and it was all friendly.
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5yrs ago today, we got the keys to this car park in Shoreditch. No power, no water, no drainage. 6wks and 3 days later we opened DINERAMA. So many new food businesses have been launched from here. It’s been brilliant fun and great to see it evolve. I hope we re-open one day.👊
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I was on BBC News earlier talking about Milk & Honey, a business I opened in Soho 18 years ago. We’ve paid over £3.9m in rent since 2002. Our landlord is very wealthy, owns the building outright and has no debt on it, but he still expects rent to be paid in full. #NationalTimeOut
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Oh no. Look at what happens when a local authority puts empty space to good use and then councillors and residents overwhelmingly support your licence application. Look at all these jobs we’ve created in Woolwich. 💪. #WoolwichPublicMarket
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NationalTimeOut. This is an edited copy of the letter I sent yesterday to the Chancellor, @RishiSunak. It’s quite long but there’s a lot to deal with. We’ll press on from here with our campaign to save 2 million jobs. Hospitality is really struggling and it will get worse.
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Our licence for #WoolwichPublicMarket has been APPROVED. Thank you to everyone who supported us. We’ll see you all at our opening weekend 01/02/03 Th/Fr/Sa March. Which is, YIKES, just over three weeks away. We had better get a move on and build it. 😳
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I’ve just recorded an interview for Ch 4 News, going out tonight. I have no idea how much of it will be used or if it will get bumped for other stuff but I talked about the devastating impact of #Coronavirus on hospitality businesses. I made the following points:.
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If you’re tweeting articles from the Daily Express, you’ve already lost the argument.
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@AvonandsomerRob Hello Rob. Apologies for pissing on your popular tweet but I think you might have got that slightly wrong. Gary drives a Mini Electric 3 door hatch.
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LAST FOUR DAYS OF DINERAMA. Dinerama closes this weekend. Gone for good. After five years, one fire and 2 million visitors, we’re finished because of our fucking landlord. Sunday is the last day’s trading of the best business I’ve ever been involved with. Come and say goodbye.
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So in the end I’ve got everything back (apart from my knackered old laptop which needed replacing anyway) and I’ve met one (and maybe two? - hard to know about the churchyard guy) very helpful homeless guy + seen the good work that hostels do. London is GREAT. 👊
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@GaryLineker Trying to work out how I can like your tweet 1,000 times.👍 Look at the state of this prick. 🙄
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@GaryLineker This is BOLLOCKS. When I was 13, we beat Millbrook Modern 12-1 in the semi-final of the Salford Trophy Cup Shield. #FakeNews @OptaJoe.
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LOOK at this. 👀 . Well played France. 🇫🇷.
A €300bn national bailout from France. That’s more than twenty times what the UK has given over to the economic impact of COVID-19. The question is not whether @RishiSunak will end up returning with another massive economic package. The question is how soon, and how much?.
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Legalise drugs, tax, licence and control their distribution, give all the proceeds to the NHS. Win WIN.
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The new VAT reduction applies to food but not alcohol. So from now on: . 🍺 A bag of crisps is £5 (includes a free beer). 🍸 A tiny bowl of olives is £10 (includes a free gin martini/gin & tonic). 🍷 A dairylea triangle is £25 (includes a free bottle of wine). 🤓.
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Hospitality is the UK’s 3rd largest private employer, creating 1 in 8 new jobs and 9% of all jobs. Often first jobs for young people. Our economic contribution is massive - £130bn annually (bigger than automotive + aeronautics + pharma combined) with tax receipts of £39bn.
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WEEK 42. The latest PHE weekly figures are in. Infections (outside of the home) traceable to hospitality venues is still at only 3%. Almost 80% is happening in care homes, schools, universities and the workplace. As everyone knows, it’s NOT HAPPENING IN HOSPITALITY. 😠
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These are great from BT Sport. Every time I see the penalty replay, I’m still not sure it’s going in. Love the way all the players immediately run to the Utd fans at the final whistle. I haven’t felt this anxious or elated watching my team since we beat Bayern in Barcelona in 99.
Morning morning morning people. MUST WATCH 🚨 Brilliant work once again from the #NoFilterUCL team at @btsportfootball 🙌🏽⚽️🔴
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Message from my 13 yr old daughter who REALLY wants an iPhone X:. ‘So basically I’m gonna trade in 2 iPhone 5s some 4s if we have any and this phone and get a 10 and if I need more money I will look in the sofas.’.
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There it was. My iPad was RIGHT THERE in his backpack. I’d followed its movements for 6 days and we’d finally tracked it down to a backpack on a park bench in a churchyard in Hoxton. Incredible. I reached in to pull it out. “This is mine,” I said. “Thanks for looking after it.”.
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@stirlingduncan Yep. Over £2.5m rent paid. Won't even defer £50k by three months. What a prick.
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FFS that Richard Corrigan knows how to write a menu. Look 👀 at it. LOOK. AT. IT.
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What a good idea and the best £499 I’ve spent. Buy the store or anything you can.
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Huge admiration for all the Tier 1 and 2 hospitality teams working flat out to get open and going from tomorrow, despite everything this government has done to our industry. Huge sympathy for the Tier 3 teams trapped in lockdown with no idea when, or if, they'll ever work again.
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As Trump's immigration ban takes effect, meanwhile in Streatham.
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Lockdowns: If at first they don’t succeed, fail, fail and fail again.
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I miss my iPad but it’s bittersweet because it’s clearly having a great time. What to do though to get it back? Do I send in a SWAT team to @cevicheuk Old St and hope they find the f•cker that nicked it?. 🤷♂️.
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I've just received a letter from my landlord's solicitor demanding interest at 4.1% on the rent we've not paid, for the period we've been forced to close by Government order. To coin a phrase 'What planet are they on?'.
I was on BBC News earlier talking about Milk & Honey, a business I opened in Soho 18 years ago. We’ve paid over £3.9m in rent since 2002. Our landlord is very wealthy, owns the building outright and has no debt on it, but he still expects rent to be paid in full. #NationalTimeOut
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We re-open Milk & Honey tomorrow and then every Th/Fr/Sa 18:00-01:00 for the next 10wks before closing for good because we cannot agree a rent deal with our landlord. This place is a gem. I hope some of you make it down before the end of Sept to see the place out in style. 🍸🍹.
This is Milk & Honey in Soho. A very special place 18yrs old last week. It’s been the ‘World’s Best Bar’ and the making of many great bartenders, but we may never re-open. Annual rent is £200,000 but our landlord won’t allow any deferral/rent free. Expects full payment upfront.🤨
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BREAKING: No news. Over 18,000 well-managed pubs opened in England on the weekend. and nothing happened. Sorry to disappoint those who were predicting carnage.
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Thank you to the lovely Londoner who anonymously returned my wallet, credit cards and cash all intact (apart from some 🦊 damage) by post.
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Only 1.3% of the population of England is in Tier 1. This means 99% of us can no longer go to the pub just for a pint. These restrictions will last well into the new year and possibly for the next 4 months. AND THERE IS NO FUCKING EVIDENCE IT'S HAPPENING IN HOSPITALITY.
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INFECTIONS ARE NOT HAPPENING IN HOSPITALITY. PHE's latest Covid Surveillance Report for week 39 shows that only 2.8% of traceable transmissions (outside the home) happened in hospitality. Blaming hospitality is a LIE. The curfew is BULLSHIT.
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We thought we had him at Tesco’s. We just missed him by M&S but then lost him north of Finsbury Square. Always moving, evading capture. Blending in with the night crowd. Too many people at this time of day. I drove home and had a chicken kiev.
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Most of us went along with lockdown because we didn’t know what we were dealing with at the time. But we know now and this curfew is a huge mistake which will cause infections to rise. It’s also a catastrophic example of economic self-harm. It must be cancelled. #CancelTheCurfew.
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After the re-opening of pubs, bars restaurants on 04 July, there were 8 straight weeks of flat/falling cases. Almost 500 million visitors and countless billions of interactions without any increase in infections, including all of August. It’s not happening in hospitality.
The Treasury rejects theory 'eat out to help out' contributed to Covid rise
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#HawkerHouse LIVES to DELIGHT another day. 40 direct jobs saved, 100+ others through the small businesses we support. LB Southwark licensing sub-committee made a sensible decision in the end. Thank you everyone who supported us. 👏
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There's an army of idiots on here blaming August's #EatOutToHelpOut for the 100k deaths. Hospitality re-opened on 04 July 2020. We then had 8 great weeks of flat/falling cases. Almost 500m visitors + billions of interactions and no increase in cases. And then schools re-opened.
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From Public Heath England data: Only 2.8% of out of the home infections traceable to hospitality venues.
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“To anyone who's anxious about this I want to give them reassurance today that there will be no cliff edge to the furlough scheme. I am working as we speak to figure out the most effective way to wind down the scheme and ease people back into work in a measured way.” Rishi Sunak.
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If, like me, you don't feel you should benefit from a £10 taxpayer-funded discount on an #EatOutToHelpOut meal, please consider donating all your discounts to @magic_breakfast. They do fantastic work feeding kids and it only takes a few minutes.🤗
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These guys are the absolute best in the business. They are a gold standard employer for our industry, with unrivalled training and treatment of their teams. A very sad day for hundreds of great young people who have lost their jobs.
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Does anyone know this dog? I'd really like to meet him. Maybe hang out, go to Ibiza. http://t.co/pKWzZzrnm1.
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We open Public at #WoolwichPublicMarket on Friday 02 March. We will be open every Friday from 5pm and every Saturday from noon. 8 great traders, 5 new bars and free entry. Last orders at midnight. See you in SE18.
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It’s hard to beat a pint outside a pub on a sunny Friday after work. *This is The Fox in Shoreditch. It’s BYO beer and pint glass. No dawdling, no toilets.
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#HawkerHouse is a wonderful street food market in a warehouse in Canada Water. On Mon we may lose our licence. No idea why. Let’s hope not.
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Public in Woolwich. I bet you didn’t think it was going to look like this. I know I didn’t. 🤗#WoolwichPublicMarket
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Are these the most manly crisps?. Proper ✅.Thick cut ✅.Roast Beef ✅.Mustard ✅. Ideally should be cooked in lard. 🏋️♂️
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I’ve written back to our landlord. I don’t expect we’ll get anywhere and without a #NationalTimeOut, we won’t be able to re-open Milk & Honey. Including VAT, we’ve paid at least £3.9m rent in 18yrs. (This is slightly edited - names, numbers and some other bits taken out).
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Street Feast has signed a 10yr lease on an amazing new rooftop space in E14. 10,000+ sq ft opening January 2017. 👍
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2019: Was the year that people - who have never opened a business or created a job or an opportunity or nurtured a career for anyone but themselves, who have never signed a lease or a personal guarantee, or had to pay a commercial rent, an insane service charge and crazy rates. .
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There are MILLIONS of cheerful, skilful and helpful people who work in hospitality. We all have a can-do and a get-done attitude. We know how to adapt to challenging operating conditions. A 'social distancing' future will not work for pubs, clubs, bars and most restaurants.
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Can we please STOP calling it social distancing? Physical distancing is a much better description of what we mean. It’s W.H.O. recommended and will help get our most social spaces - pubs, clubs, cafes, bars restaurants, theatres, cinemas - back to some kind of normal. Thanks. 👊.
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“On certain days, I just feel like going on to Parliament Square with a handmade placard saying: ‘What are you doing?’”.
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The number of professors and other commentators on TV and here who think a 10pm curfew is just one hour less. It’s much more significant than that. Most UK pubs, bars and restaurants are licensed to midnight. Many until much later. The level of meh and ignorance is astonishing.
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My greatest wish for 2022 is that chefs stop using truffle oil. 🤢.
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Come on please. GET ON WITH IT. We need action. We need clarity. We need leadership.
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@HawksmoorMCR Whoever made this mistake, can they look after our table the next time I’m in please? Cheers.
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