‘We only expected to sell 30 doughnuts a week’: The dessert café that’s gone viral just a month after opening

"Influencers have been mentioning us and more and more people keep on coming down now to visit"

Rocking up outside Radium Street in Ancoats in the middle of the week, James Turner unloads a huge bag of flour from his car boot ahead of a busy night service. He’s already had to cancel his day off today.

But there’s no complaints from James - who radiates a huge smile and a buzz of positivity outside his bakery Baby Mayhem. A little over a month ago, James admits he had no idea whether his idea for a ‘mad’ dessert shop would work, never mind envisioning that there would be queues down the street come the opening of service.

Yet, that is exactly what has happened. Having taken over the former Lazy Tony's Lasagneria site up from the Flat Baker, the hatch-based unit has now swapped slabs of pasta for humongous doughnuts, towering ice cream pots and refreshing iced coffee. It's already even gone down a hit with Manchester rapper Aitch.

James, who still has a full-time job working for music festivals, is clearly a little overwhelmed by the positive response to the shop - it’s only open in the evenings during the week, it’s a little walk away from the city centre - but he’s more than happy to run with it.

“We were only expecting to sell 30 doughnuts a week,” James tells the Manchester Evening News. “It’s become something else - we now sell around 100 a day. There were a couple of days at the beginning where we were like ‘have we made a bad decision’, but then it just seems to have gone mental. Influencers have been mentioning us and more and more people keep on coming down now to visit.”

Available in ice cream or standard versions, the doughnuts on the menu span just four flavours ranging from £4.85 to £6. There's the Dubai, featuring spaghetti ice cream, pistachio sauce, and Kanefa pastry whilst the Raspberry Ripple tastes like a childhood of queuing up outside the ice cream van for a 99.

There’s also the decadent Tiramisu, which features fresh mascarpone and is served with their own pipettes featuring a shot of Salford-based coffee. It’s over-the-top in the best possible way.

“I wanted the name to be a little bit cheeky,” James says of what Baby Mayhem stands for. “Everyone needs a little bit of naughtiness in their life so that’s essentially what it is: A little bit of mayhem. It spices up life, and it’s also one of those names which can also just mean anything - that’s the magic of it.”

James has worked in the hospitality industry for a number of years. Fresh from university, he began his career as a chef at famed student haunt The Footage and also worked his way up from bartender to general manager at Sankey’s. But he always envisioned his own place.

“Last year, my mate bought an ice cream machine and I wanted to set something up,” James says of the start of what is now Baby Mayhem. “I had the idea of opening up via one of the back units here down an alleyway, sort of like Fat Pat’s. I had been trying to sort it out, then a big fence was laid down that basically scrapped those plans.

“At the end of the day, it was a bit naïve of me and sort of my own fault for not checking what was going to happen there, so it did kind of mess up what I wanted to originally do. Then this unit came up and I could see the potential.”

Transforming the unit with all the money, resources and time he could with his friends helping out, James opened Baby Mayhem at the end of April. When it opened, the front of the unit featured a make-shift front made by his joiner - it was only ever to be temporary, but he admits it has now become part and parcel of the place.

“The reason it still looks so rustic is because I literally had no money left and just had to open it up as it was,” he explains. “The sign was just something to show our name off when we opened but people love it, it’s become part of our branding.

“There’s still a lot of things we need to sort out, but slowly and surely, we’re building and making improvements every week. For the first four weeks when we started, I was mixing everything by hand - now we have a hand mixer that certainly helps with that.”

James says he feels he is having a ‘full circle’ moment with the opening - and success - of the café, which is just yards away from where he spent ten years working at Sankey’s.

“It’s crazy to me to remember that Sankey’s was just round the corner from here,” he laughs. “It’s such a vibrant area and I really do think it’s just going to keep getting better and better. There’s some wonderful businesses here, there’s a great sense of community here.”

Whilst James says he is continuing to improve the unit, he says he is pretty proud of the products that they are serving. Offering a small selection makes it easier, and also means they can keep prices affordable.

“It just all feels like it’s now sort of fitting into place,” he explains. “We’re trying to take things one step at a time and not get too ahead of ourselves - we’re making sure that the product is just right, and I think we do have something that is really special here.”

Baby Mayhem is on 23 Radium Street, Ancoats, M4 6AY. Open Weds-Fri 5.30pm to 10pm, and from 8am to 10pm on Saturday and Sunday.