Guac 'n' Roll has been serving amazing vegan food and putting on grassroots DIY punk gigs at 51 Kempston Street for three years. We've now been offered the opportunity to take over our whole building, and we need your help to refurbish the restaurant space and secure the building's future by opening a brand new bar upstairs, so we can help the punk & metal community put on even more gigs, as well as creating a hangout for Liverpool's alternative scene and our local neighbourhood.

The plan:

Secure the future for Guac 'n' Roll as our area changes, by carrying out necessary repairs in the restaurant and having an upstairs bar which increases the number of gigs we can accommodate alongside operating as a restaurant, plus three small creative studios on the second floor.

The Bar:

Little Hell - named after the Victorian nickname for the area! A punk & rock bar, a home for all Liverpool's extreme and alternative music scenes to use for gigs, a place for craft markets, record fairs, drag shows, film showings, and any other DIY community event you can think of! A place to chill with a roof garden.

The structure already exists but we need to pay for licensing fees, redecorate, make safety improvements to stairs, floors, the fire alarm system, and clear out several skips worth of rubbish left by the previous occupier. The cover on the roof garden needs replacing, and we'll need to pay rent & utilities while we build the space. In addition to this we need to soundproof really, really well - the whole of our street is currently undergoing redevelopment into student & residential flats, so we need to be sure that noise won't jeopardise the space or disturb future neighbours. We'll create several bar jobs, and opportunities for local sound techs to work and learn.

The Restaurant:

We've been running Guac 'n' Roll Vegan Kitchen since 2018, we built our home on Kempston Street in 2023, but running a niche vegan business is never that secure and we could do with a boost to refurbish the place! Donations will help cover improvements to the floor, windows, PA system, kitchen equipment, and make sure we can serve awesome vegan food for years to come.

The Studios:

Three little offices on the top floor, we're planning on making two of them available to local creatives as studio space, and one of them into a print room so we can create affordable merch for bands and have a little creative retreat on the premises. These just need a lick of paint, a couple of pieces of printing equipment, and some minor plumbing work to be ready.

We appreciate every donation, share, and repost so much! If you can't donate we'll also be running a couple of volunteer days to clear out the upper floors and we'll gladly give any surplus music or printing equipment a home.