Freight Island — Restaurant in Manchester

Prepare for a wall of text about the 2024 Euros. TL;DR is at the bottom.

TVs During the Slovakia game England scored at the start of extra time but the TVs were still showing ads, so everyone missed it. Initially I thought this was ITV’s error but during the final which was on BBC, I realized the ads were FREIGHT ISLAND CHOOSING TO PLAY ADS FOR THEMSELVES, not the broadcaster. The 3000+ attendees seemingly weren’t making them enough profit, leading them to play so many ads that people missed a goal.

Door Staff At the door there was a guy who on both the Slovakia game and the final wouldn't get your attention, mutter something, and then when asked what he’d said would borderline yell at you. Completely uncalled for and an extremely bad way to represent a place you haven’t even been in yet.

More importantly during the Slovakia game just after England scored in extra time (which everyone missed due to the above point about the TVs) a fight broke out and turns out it was two bouncers FIGHTING EACH OTHER, not patrons. This was in the “sports bar” area near the smaller screen closest to the main room. Random patrons had to intervene to break up the two door staff fighting, which was quite literally unbelievable.

Bars This issue alone will deter most people who came for the Euros from ever returning here for a big event. Every single queue had a minimum wait of 20 minutes. It's unbelievable that they would choose to put only 6 people on a bar to cater to an area of easily 500+ people. I joined a queue in the “sports bar” area at 19:20 thinking I’d easily get drinks in time for the 8pm kick-off, but it took 55 minutes causing us to miss the first part of the game. Multiple people in the queue said they’d been waiting over an hour. Additionally due to the waits people were understandably ordering more to “stock up” to avoid another queue, which then created more queues. The bigger problem was that the bar staff were just insanely slow. It’s hard to explain, but compared to other bars, they just seemed very slow. Possibly the most annoying thing was them stopping to have banter which is fair play when quiet, but when people are missing the Euros final because of the wait you’d think they could focus on serving. One person was to be fair being inappropriately rude to the bar person and the bar person said it was their first day. Having worked in bars, I worry that this is the classic toxic bar manager thing of letting more experienced staff have it off. I have huge sympathy for the individual staff as it’s not their fault that there weren’t enough of them and that they were under-trained. It wasn’t fair that people were being rude to them, but it’s indicative of a wider management problem for allowing this situation to happen.

Toilets Far too few for what I assume is easily a 3000+ person venue. I visited a couple of years ago and remember a huge room of unisex cubicles, which seemingly no longer exist. Now there’s just one tiny set for men, some portaloos and urinals. The main issue here is when coupled with the slow bar service, you literally felt like you couldn’t get either a drink or use the toilets without missing part of the game.

Tickets The tickets for the final mentioned a 4pm final entry for an 8pm game. I understand not wanting everyone to show up at 7pm and create massive queues but 4pm felt cheeky, as if they were trying to force people to come early and spend money. Furthermore, the 4pm entry time was only mentioned on the tickets and not in the ads. I saw on social media that multiple people were asking for clarification on this, understandably citing that they were intending to go after work and wouldn’t make it for 4pm, and Freight Island of course didn’t respond.

Summary / TL;DR Absolute shambles of a venue. How a massive venue like this which has been open for multiple years couldn’t prepare for a massive event is insane. Completely understaffed, rude door staff, appears massively over-profit-hungry, and completely unfit...

Amazing concept, great location, gorgeous food, brilliant service. Visited here on a Sunday recently after seeing this place on Instagram, what a place indeed. A very friendly welcome from the very start and showed to our table quite quickly. This place is quite big with some amazing seating areas inside and out. Obviously weather conditions will dictate if the outside areas are available, but if you do go inside, there are some relatively big steps to take to get to some areas, so be prepared for that. We were in the platform seating area, which was perfect for us, seats four comfortably and set to one side, great seating area!! There are food choices available from around the world here, supplied by several food vendors that are located within the main building area. As a party we sampled something from everyone, apart from the Mexican vendor. We will try the Tacos though on our next visit, that’s guaranteed! The food is very good, very flavourful, well prepared and presented well. There was nothing that I didn’t like and I tried samples of two Vietnamese dishes, two of the kebab options, pizza, burger, several sides and eclair deserts. I particularly enjoyed the lamb kebab, please do not expect this to be the type you buy on your way home after a few pints, it’s nothing like that. The meat was gorgeous, the salad and extras were also lovely. Too much bread for my personal liking though, it can be too filling, but yes, it was stunning. The pizza was also very, very nice. You can buy by the slice or a whole 22” full pizza option. We just had slices, but the whole pizza boxes were huge, so if you’re hungry, go for the 22” option. Another personal favourite of mine was the white truffle and Parmesan fries side dish, gorgeous!! The eclairs were OK, we were quite full though at this point, but a couple of them were lacking a bit of filling, but I did enjoy the coffee eclair personally. The beers and wines available here are brilliant, simply stunning, all tastes are covered indeed. Everything is ordered via a scanned QR code on your table. This was so plain and easy to do. Everything was also delivered relatively quickly, both food and drinks. The staff were great, very polite and well mannered when delivering stuff to the table. There was a slight mix up with one drink order, but this was rectified and dealt with very professionally. This place is quirky, I love it and I could imagine how good a great Halloween, Christmas, New Year party would be here, it has unlimited potential. Some of the prices are a little high on certain things in my personal opinion, but when you take into account the location, the building, the concept and basically all of the overheads that must be involved, these prices are valid to a point. If you have the chance, get on a train to Manchester Piccadilly, walk across to here and have a brilliant night, eating amazing food, drinking amazing drinks and listening to great music. What more could you want? Very highly...

I have been to many Freight Island events however this was the worst one. Booked tickets to watch the women’s euro finals & was told there was no reserving seats/tables, it was first come first serve, understandable as it’s going to be a busy day. However, me and my friend turned up a few hours early as we expected it to be busy & there was already reserved signs at tables which confused us. We managed to find some tables with no reservation signs on so sat down, we then were told we weren’t allowed to sit there as they were reserved but with no sign how were we to have known. We moved & looked online to see if we could book the tables as they seemed to be available as no one was sat there & people were getting turned away from them. We managed to book one until 5:30(which the match started at 5) but we wanted to finish our food & buy another drink before the match started. We bought a bottle of wine which cost £40 & also some desserts which cost £20, in total £80(as we were told even though we had book the table, we must purchase food & drink to keep the table). At 4:45 we were informed by the waitress & another member of staff that we must leave the table as another party had arrived with reservations, we had this table booked till 5:30! We still had food on our table & half a bottle of wine which we paid quite a bit for so we felt we shouldn’t have to move. We then got told we must move at 5:30 on the dot which is understandable because that’s the time we reserved until but the rudeness from the staff was disgusting, I have never seen such bad attitude from waiting staff before, the looks we received even after booking our table was disgusting. For an event that is free to get tickets for there needs to be more specific information for booking as Freight Island is normally first come...