Thor’s Tipi is as much a part of the season in York as the Christmas Market. We meet the couple behind the city’s annual pop-up festive bar
Amanda Monaghan loves Christmas. She loves parties. And she loves watching people have a good time.
All three come together in Thor’s Tipis, the phenomenally successful business that she runs with her husband Richard.
For some people, Christmas doesn’t really start until Thor’s Tipi goes up in York, say the couple.
Thor’s first became part of York’s festive scene in 2015 when a giant, double-sized canvas tent, festooned with fairy lights and boasting a fire pit and pop-up bar, opened in Parliament Street next to the charming huts of the Christmas market.
It was an instant success.
‘It was a crazy opening. I went to Booker’s and bought enough mulled wine for two weeks – but we sold out in our first three hours,’ says Amanda. ‘ I had to send friends and families all over to buy more – they cleared out Tesco and Asda!’
Thor’s Tipi became a regular attraction in York at Christmastime and was so popular that not only did the couple open a second big festive tent in the grounds of the city’s Principal hotel in 2018, they set up replicas across Yorkshire – in Leeds and Sheffield – and then in Lincoln and London.
Summer tipis appeared too – and the pop-up bars became a welcome adjunct to the couple’s first and primary venture, PapaKata, which provided tipis for weddings and events. The addition of the temporary bars gave the couple a year-round business rather than a seasonal one.
PapaKata was set up in 2006 when the couple, who live in Acaster Malbis just outside York, wanted a tipi for their wedding but couldn’t find one in the north.
Their solution? They bought their own and started hiring it out.
Their first booking came from Jamie Oliver who wanted a pop-up kitchen for his TV show Jamie’s Chef, filmed at his home.
Richard recalls: ‘The tipi got delivered from Sweden to Jamie’s garden in Essex. It came with an instruction manual, and me and Amanda’s dad had to put it up. It took us five days – now it takes five hours!’
The couple, who have two children and met on product design degree course at Northumbria University, Newcastle, were living in London at the time and gave up their day jobs to throw themselves into PapaKata.
In the first year they had 12 weddings, but by 2008 were doing 70 and had a growing staff. Amanda says: ‘We were not only doing weddings, but events and festivals.
‘One summer we were doing 28
