Aside from a less-than-perfect attempt at eating in in the weeks after it opened in Birmingham, I have a lot of respect for Gail’s, that London chain on New Street.

The venue that had been run out of town by disgruntled Londoners who said another branch would ‘threaten the soul’ of their neighbourhoods came to Birmingham in January this year.

In doing so, it worked to resurrect something long lost in the unit it had taken over from the shoe shop Ecco on our city’s busiest thoroughfare.

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It reignited a 125-year-old spark of coffee culture, one started by Kardomah a century-and-a-quarter ago which was lost when the coffee shop shut in 1968 – read that helping of history here.

It made a fuss about the old ghost sign out front instead of covering it with new designs in Gail’s signature red.

It made the old wooden staircase a feature again, drawing eyes to the old fireplace and the original touches that had made the Kardomah such a welcome spot to sit, drink cuppas and be happy.

This summer was Gail’s first in Birmingham city centre and it’s been doing something else that has made me respect them even more.

They’ve put tables and chairs outside on Needless Alley.

There, customers sup their drinks, fiddle with laptops and pass the time of day under the Birmingham sun.

If you squint, it looks like the birth of the kind of little charming alleyway you’d find in any major European city, where people indulge in afternoon cakes and maybe ten fags and forget their problems.

Now, our problems are a little less easy to ignore on Needless Alley. The tables and chairs on which you can sit and snack on challah are accompanied by bins. Bins that have become, sadly, totemic for Birmingham 2025.

But the hope is there. The potential. The intention.

This is how good things could be in Birmingham city centre. Next year, maybe there’ll be more tables, more businesses with THEIR tables. People, sitting outside and enjoying just existing in this cool, young, world-class city.

For all of the criticism of Gail’s, those levelled at it for soul-sucking and taking away, I can’t help but feel in the old Kardomah, and on Needless Alley, they’re breathing fresh life into a city street that really needs it.