Mason Moore | Hinckley Reporter | 16 March 2023
AN INDEPENDENT restaurant in Hinckley town centre who specialised in ‘fresh Thai food’ have permanently closed down, almost two years after setting up shop.
Nid’s Kitchen opened on The Borough in May 2021 where they breathed a new lease of life into a former Coral bookies branch, after sitting untouched for 12 years.
It opened to hungry Hinckley residents amidst the height of the coronavirus pandemic, meaning they could only operate on a takeaway and delivery basis.
They finally offered a dine-in service in February 2022, when Covid restrictions were dropped. This was stopped just eight months later in October as a ‘cost-cutting’ measure, as bosses said it was “costing too much to run the whole restaurant”.
Nid’s then joined forces with a Regent Street based cocktail bar in December 2022, where patrons could order their food online and have it delivered it to the bar, where they could enjoy it there instead.
However, this deal was seemingly short lived, lasting until around February last month, where Nid’s made their final promotional post for themselves as a business on social media site Facebook.
And recently, a notice announcing their permanent closure was quietly posted on their official website.
It reads: “Hi everyone, we are now closed permanently. Thank you everyone for your support over the years and our best wishes to you all for the future.”
Another message, posted on their Google Maps profile, states: “Nid’s Kitchen Thai Restaurant Hinckley is permanently closed.”
Whilst they were trading, they received positive reviews from residents dining in and ordering deliveries. One said Nid’s served up “delicious and tasty” Thai food, whilst another added that the food was “absolutely gorgeous, with fantastic flavours”.
Sadly, there’s too many places to cater for the dining needs of Hinckley residents. Many have come and gone in a short space of time, many remain empty. And there’s news the old Santander is to become a cafe (another one). It’s madness, especially charing £3.20-3.50 a cup.
These businesses are failing because they are offering what exactly others do, are late to the party, have no USP and consequently struggle to make it work. We’ve too many cafes as it is and another spreads the custom more thinly. A non-food example of oversupply is the number of vape shops in Hinckley – how can they all survive?
Another factor is we are in a recession, people dont have the money for expensive meals out, other than special occasions.
Nidd kitchen was excellent. Sadly the costs of electricity, gas and food has gone up so much. Coupled with people having less free cash means a number of these food businesses will struggle
Recession? Tell all the people continuing to go McDonalds they are always packed every time I pass queuing down the road @ both A5 & A47
How do they survive? Money laundering.
Colin Trdmsn says, “Sadly, there’s too many places to cater for the dining needs of Hinckley residents”, but where are these places? I largely see low quality Bangladeshi restaurants (posing as Indian), fast food restaurants, cafés that serve food and nothing of good quality, taste or sophistication.