Popular Manchester bar set to open new venue in Wigan

Bask, which opened in Stockport in 2022, will open a second site called Bask Live in the town centre this summer.

The speakeasy-style bar and music venue will take over the former Indiependence building on King Street West after the club closed its doors in February this year.

Bask was the brain child of music promoter Benji Taylor who co-owns the company with Simon Silcock who is from Wigan..

Benji originally planned to open a vegan restaurant at the site, but had to change direction when issues arose with the fitting on an extraction fan at the large venue in Stockport.

He said: “My girlfriend’s dad worked with Simon at Curry’s and over lockdown I was making these vegan truffles.

"He took some in and Simon liked them and said do you want to come in for a meeting and we can talk about maybe investing in it.

"We went in and worked out some numbers and he was like ‘this seems a bit too small fry where do you see this going?’

"So I mentioned I’d love to have a vegan restaurant where he said right lets do it, write me a menu, I’ll find a space and take it from there.

"We found this space in Stockport and four months down the line we had issues with the council who owned the building about putting extraction in.

"We then came up with Bask which is a seven day a week operation, we open at 8am where we serve breakfast and lunch then in the evenings we turn it round to either a bar or we have live music where recently we’ve had the likes of the Lightning Seeds, The Zutons and Liam Fray from the Courteeners.

"Its essentially a hub for entertainment.”

The Wigan venue will operate slightly differently to the Stockport one as it won’t be open during the daytime.

Benji said the plan was to always open a second venue in Simon’s hometown so when Indiependence became available they jumped at the chance.

He added: “The plan was to always do a second one because Simon is from Wigan and the next bar was always going to be there.

"Indiependence came up and we had a chat about it, went and had a look at it and decided to go with it.

"We were always on the look out for somewhere in Wigan.

"Simon’s loves those kind of old-school clubs so it was perfect.

"It’ll be a slightly different concept, it won’t be open through the day but it will be open for live music, comedy all of the things we do here.

"Upstairs will have its own identity called Red which a well-know house DJ and producer John Fitz is coming onboard with to bring in some heavyweight names and dance events.

"There’ll be some stuff we run over two floors and there will also be stuff where upstairs will be ran differently to downstairs.

"It’s worked really well in Stockport and connected with the people.

"It feels the Wigan project will have the same feel.

"Hopefully it will bring something that is quite new and fresh for the area.”