Popular sandwich shop bounces back from hit and run as temporary new location was launched in five days
A popular sandwich shop in Northampton has bounced back from a hit and run incident, as its new temporary location was prepared in just five days to reopen in January as planned.
Spread in Adnitt Road was left with structural damage after a stolen car hit another vehicle which ploughed into the building. This took place late on December 22 last year and the building is unsafe to enter until it has been repaired.
“It was a shocking thing to happen,” said business owner Amy Adams, who opened Spread in January 2023. “But it’s one of those things. You never expect something like that to happen so we decided to carry on and hope for the best.”
Amy and her team immediately knew they had to find an alternative as there was no way this was going to be the end of Spread for the four-to-six months it is anticipated to fix the building.
Their new location on Roe Road is the preparation kitchen of Adriana Staniscia from Hample Italian Hampers, who collaborates with Spread and is located in the Adnitt Road premises as well. Adriana is kindly letting Spread utilise the space for as long as they need.
It took five 12-hour days to get the new space ready to open to the public, and the hard work commenced in January as Amy wanted her team to have the Christmas period off as planned.
“We took the challenge head on in January,” said Amy. “All of our stuff is still in the shop as it was too dangerous to enter. We did trips to IKEA and the team had good ideas. We know exactly what we want to offer at Spread and how we want to do that.
“It’s a much smaller space than we’re used to so it was all hands on deck and absolute grafting. It was worth it. We reopened on January 6 and we were closed over Christmas anyway. We opened on the day we were meant to open as planned.”
Amy has been blown away by the level of support offered by the Spread community, who immediately came to offer their help following the incident.
Business is operating in an identical way to how it was before and the team is seeing a steady flow of customers on Roe Road, which is just around the corner from their original building.
Talking about the response from the Spread community, Amy said: “We know how much it means to them and how much they mean to us – and we knew we had to get the show back on the road.
“Without them and the way everyone showed up, we wouldn’t have had a purpose or reason to reopen so desperately and make the effort to carry on.”