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The cafe that is now the very last of its kind

Gemma Sherlock
BBC News, Liverpool
BBC A café sign in green which reads ' National Milk Bars' with a glass frontage with arched windowsBBC
Ellesmere Port's National Milk Bars cafe is the last one left in England and Wales

Walk around any UK town centre and you are likely to find at least one of the major coffee shop chains' estimated 4,000 outlets.

What you will not find anywhere other than Ellesmere Port in Cheshire is a National Milk Bars café.

While the chain was never of a scale anything like that of Starbucks, Caffé Nero or Costa Coffee, it was, for a time, a staple of high streets across the north-west of England and Wales.

Upon buying the café in the Port Arcades shopping centre, Alisan San had no idea that he was not only trying to keep a business afloat, but was taking on the challenge of keeping a brand alive as well.

National Portrait Gallery/BBC A man smiles and looks away from the camera wearing a frill white shirt and black jacketNational Portrait Gallery/BBC
Willie Griffiths founded and ran the chain

National Milk Bars were the brainchild of Welsh dairy farmer Robert "Willie" William Griffiths.

In the early 1930s, the milk bar phenomenon reached London from the USA. Griffiths saw glasses of milk being sold over smart counters for a few pence a glass, and decided to take the concept back home to Wales.

Griffiths and his wife Florence opened the first National Milk Bar in Colwyn Bay in 1933, and ran the chain from the Woodlands farm in Forden, near Welshpool, for a number of years.

A crowd of well dressed people stand outside a milk bar
The former milk bar in Aberystwyth

In their heyday there were 17 National Milk Bars dotted across Wales and the north-west of England, selling dairy-based treats including milkshakes and cream cakes.

Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham were all home to a National Milk Bar, and the Liverpool branch – once said to have been paid a visit by the Beatles – is immortalised on the façade of a building on Lime Street that replaced the demolished Futurist cinema.

But as tastes changed, so did National Milk Bars' fortunes. And but for the Ellesmere Port outlet, the brand would be consigned to the history books.

Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives A row of Edwardian buildings Courtesy of Liverpool Central Library and Archives
The Liverpool National Milk Bar is said to have welcomed The Beatles

"You come in and you feel as though you're amongst friends," says regular customer Joy. "Everybody knows each other by name".

"We are here every day, every day bar Sunday," says Mavis. "Hopefully we are not going to lose this. Hopefully this will keep going".

An elderly woman sits in a cafe wearing a lilac jumper
Joy said everyone who comes to the National Milk Bars is "like family'

Owner Alisan was a chef before he bought the last surviving National Milk Bar.

The 45-year-old may have changed the menu and modernised the interior a little, but the signage on the front is the same as it was when the branch opened when the shopping centre was built in the 1980s.

A man speaks off from the camera, wearing a black t-shirt and brown overalls standing behind a café counter
Alisan San said he is pleased to learn so much about the bar's history

Now it faces competition from the major high street brands, with a Caffe Nero having taken up one of the units in the Port Arcades.

But he is hopeful that its now-unique charm will see the brand through a few more years.

"For some people, it is more than a coffee shop," he says.

"We are like a family here. Everybody knows each other".

Additional reporting by Katie Barnfield

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