The Old Market Hall in Douglas, is set to become a Santander Work Cafe next year.

In a partnership with Noa Bakehouse, who have run the cafe on the site since 2018, the bank is to develop a café, meeting, events and co-working space in the iconic building.

Noa Bakehouse will continue to run the café from the site, adding a new, grab-and-go menu for the meeting rooms and co-working areas, and a selection of artisanal food and drinks. But it will be complemented by the addition of free, bookable meeting rooms, and accessible co-working spaces with free Wi-Fi, alongside new banking facilities. Customers will be able to meet banking staff in the building, open and manage accounts and mortgages and withdraw money using ATMs.

This is by no means the first such venture for Santander.

Since the launch of the first Santander Work Café in Chile in 2016, the bank has opened more than 100 Work Cafes around the world, including branches in Leeds and Jersey.

Noa, which means ‘fresh’ in Manx, was set up as a sourdough bakery by Pippa and Miles Pettit nearly 10 years ago.

It has expanded into patisserie, coffee roasting, and hospitality with a focus on using local Manx produce.

James Geldart, managing director, of Santander on the Isle of Man, said: ‘We’re looking forward to working with Noa Bakehouse to bring a Santander Work Café to the Isle of Man community.

‘The Work Café will be accessible and open to all the community, creating a vibrant new hub for freelancers to work, entrepreneurs to meet, and for everyone to enjoy great food, drinks, and events.

‘Pippa and Miles have a strong ethos for innovation and bring an amazing energy to the partnership.’

The last year has brought many changes and opportunities for the Pettits, with the closure of Ramsey Bakery leading to uncertainty about the future of the island’s only flour mill, Laxey Glen Mill. They are also in the process of opening a second bakery and cafe on the ground floor of the newly refurbished Peveril Building.

The original Noa Bakehouse premises, in Fort Street, will continue to be the location for their large scale bread production.

Miles and Pippa are passionate about using local Manx-grown wheat and have been working with three farmers in different locations around the island in an experiment to grow heritage varieties of wheat without the use of pesticides or fertiliser.

Although the yield will be approximately half of that of a modern wheat variety grown using current farming methods, it will command a higher price and it will save farmers from having to pay for fertiliser which has quadrupled in price over the last 12 months.

Miles said: ‘As a baker, I’m really excited because I get to work with the first natural, sustainable wheat from the island and, hopefully, from these three varieties we should get some really great flavours running through our bread and it should allow us to do some unique breadlines to supplement the range that the company has.’

Some of these new flavours and breadlines will hopefully be finding their way into the new Santander Work Cafe.

Pippa said: ‘This is an exciting project for us, and for the Isle of Man, building on the popularity of Noa and taking the Market Hall into the 21st century. The Work Café will allow us to go beyond brunch and scale up our business to bring islanders a wider range of locally produced artisanal food and drinks.’

Work on the Market Hall will start early next year, with the new Santander Work Café opening mid-2023. To find out more about the latest developments please see workcafe.im