Raphale Evans’ mum Joanne makes fried dumplings for him six days a week. Hundreds and hundreds of them.
He sells them at his cafe and health food shop ARMR Store, in Ardwick, in the sight line of the Apollo.
He’s tried to make them for himself - he’s seen them being made often enough - but somehow, he just can’t get them to taste the same.
“I’ve tried, but there’s some things that mums do the best,” he says.
Plus, it means that his mum is part of the business that he pours everything into - time, money, emotion, heart, soul. And that’s a nice thing for him.
Raphale - Raph - opened ARMR Store on March 30, 2019. He gave up his job as store manager of Predator Nutrition in the Arndale Centre - he’d worked for Holland & Barrett before that - in December of 2017, and thought he’d be open by the following January. But it didn’t work out like that.
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“I was maybe a bit naive when I moved in,” he says. “I thought there might be things like light switches. A tap. But no. Just brick. When I look back, I'm just really, really grateful for how things have happened.
"Although they were very, very difficult. Because it's been an education.”
Currently, he and his partner Lucy cook all the food - it’s spectacularly good vegan Caribbean - with dishes like jackfruit burgers, warming curries, and Jamaican classics like rice and peas and patties, and, of course, his mum’s dumplings (which are truly delicious, as with everything they serve up).
They cook it all at home in Mossley, in just their regular domestic kitchen, before transporting it every day to Ardwick. Four burners, an oven, that’s about it. “It’s not ideal,” he laughs. All the food is sourced, bought, prepped, cooked and served within 24 hours. And once it’s gone, it’s gone.
Though Caribbean food is more often synonymous with jerk chicken and smoke billowing from oil drum barbecues, the Rastafarian plant-based ital diet was preaching veganism long before it became the food revolution that it is now.
“When you get into the culture, you realise that there’s a whole community in Jamaica who don’t eat any meat, and I get a lot of inspiration from that,” he says. “We try to be authentic, but we also try to push the boundaries of what people think Jamaican food is. We want to be innovative with it.”
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When he first opened up, he was so worried about running out of food to serve people that he wouldn’t even eat what he’d made himself. Instead, he’d go to the shop next door and buy bread, butter and crisps and eat crisp sandwiches. “My focus was not me, my focus was I need to do what I have to do to make the business work,” he says.
This focus doubtless comes from the tough times. And some of them have been unbearably tough.
Growing up down the road in Longsight, as a teenager he was all set to play football. City and United both scouted him aged 10 or 11, but he didn’t have the confidence to chase it. So when was 13, and after his dad encouraged him not to let another opportunity go, he signed for Burnley.
But problems followed. His dad would take him to training, and then go jogging to pass the time. He’d return having suffer regular racial abuse along the way. Raph suffered the same in the dressing room.
Despite that, he stayed with Burnley for three years, though they eventually let him go. But by then, he knew he was good enough to make it as a professional. Another scout at City began showing interest in him, but couldn’t offer him a contract.
Preston and Blackpool were interested too, but in what he calls ‘one of the worst decisions I ever made’, he signed to Rochdale because he knew people there, it was the easy choice.
“I did the stupid, easy thing and followed my friends,” he says. “Getting a pro contract at Rochdale is probably more of an indication where you’re at than getting one at City or United.
"Every penny counts for them, so if you get a pro contract, it means they really believe in you.”
He did well. He was briefly the youngest player to make their debut for the first team, at 17. Barely a year later, he would be in prison after pleading guilty to violent disorder. He sighs.
“I’d started going out, started drinking,” he says. “I was always aware that it was only Rochdale, but I was in good shape, and there would have been things that would have inflated my ego at that point. I was sure I was going somewhere.”
He was. Just not where he thought. Part of a joint enterprise crime, he fled the scene after a group of young men he had been out with one evening in March, 2009, stabbed nightclub doorman Mohammed Kaleem Rafeek to death after a disagreement earlier that night.
Shah Mohammed Sykendar Ali, who was 26 at the time, pleaded guilty to the stabbing, and was sentenced to 17 and a half years. Raph was one of six others who were given sentences for violent disorder.
“I’m very conscious of people thinking there’s no smoke without fire,” he says. “But I know in my heart that I had nothing to do with what happened. Things got out of control.
"One week I was training, the next I was walking down what they call in prison ‘the M1’, with a bag of your belongings and people shouting abuse at you.
“It was frightening. And as an 18-year-old kid, they can see that in you. It’s abuse, death threats, they’re trying to frighten you. I witnessed things in prison that you won’t hear about in the news. There were three riots alone when I was in there.”
He was sentenced initially to five years, before it was reduced to half of that. He served just over nine months. He had the choice of pleading not guilty, and potentially serving a life-changing sentence, or guilty and going straight to prison. “If joint enterprise didn’t exist, I’d have pleaded not guilty. It entered my mind to say it on the stand. But it wasn’t worth the risk.
“Now I’m grateful for it. I say this all the time. If I hadn’t spent that nine months in prison, ARMR Store wouldn’t be here. That time built mental calluses in my brain. Building ARMR Store was much harder than prison.”
It was tough when he got out, as it is for many who have served their time. He was offered the first job he went for, as an engineer for Sky. Then he got a call later that same day. They hadn’t spotted that he’d ticked the box saying he had a criminal conviction, and they withdrew the offer immediately.
He then got a job fitness coaching with kids with the organisation Tuf*C, but again his conviction came back to bite him, and he couldn’t get the necessary clearance to work with young people. So he decided to return to football, and started seriously training again. But in another cosmic twist, just as he’d started to think he could make it, an injury saw him rupture pretty much every ligament and tendon it’s possible to rupture.
“It’s so weird how these things happen,” he says. “It felt like a message. That avenue’s closed, we now need you to do this.”
So the idea for ARMR Store was born. He’d since gone vegan - a meat-free Monday basically got out of hand - and after working for Holland & Barrett and then Predator Nutrition, he saw a potential business model - a cafe, a physical shop, and an online shop - and an opportunity to go it alone. He took out a £10,000 loan and borrowed money where he could. “I was determined to make it work,” he says.
But he wants ARMR Store to be more than just a shop or a cafe. He wants it to be a hub for the community around him, and then potentially replicable for other communities too. He provides mentorships for young people, and during the pandemic, acted as a food bank and provided free meals to those who needed it.
“The way that people feel when they come into the shop is probably more important than what they purchase,” he says. “We want to make people feel comfortable. People can just come in and look at the artwork, and maybe we can have a conversation about who painted them.
“Sometimes people come in and just read. Or maybe they need to come in and use the printer. We will never have minimum spend on a card, because I still remember times when I had less than £3 in my bank, and I used to hate when shops would implement that, because it means people can’t come and buy things. We just want to be as human and as authentic as possible.”
This is no time to rest though. He’s just launched a crowdfund campaign to try and expand the unit, install a professional kitchen and a wellness studio. He also wants to start training schemes in hospitality, and stage events for local music artists. Among the rewards are intimate concert sessions with the likes of OneDa, KinKai, Karis Jade and Superlative. Chef Mary-Ellen McTague is also set to cook for a night too.
“I’m in a position to do so many great things here,” he says. “I’ve always believed that businesses that benefit from a community need to put back into it. It’s essential.”
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