Owners of Petit Cafe and Pogue Mahone reveal plans for huge disco at former MOJO site

The owners of Liverpool bars including Petit Café and Pogue Mahone have revealed plans to open a huge disco on the former site of MOJO in the city centre.

DGB Hospitality, which also has Loretta’s in Liverpool ONE and Motel and Teddy’s dive bars, is aiming to launch Gloria’s at the end of the summer.

They hope the 400-capacity venue on Back Berry Street will be a major part of a ‘new disco era’ for the city’s nightlife, with resident DJs and a house band creating a disco based soundtrack.

Work began two months ago on a complete refit, so the space will be unrecognisable from its previous MOJO days, and plans for the new look interior include giant disco balls and a pink resin floor.

Sean Singleton, marketing manager for DGB, says Gloria’s will be totally different to any of the company’s other venues:

“We want it to feel like you’ve gone back to that classic era of disco with the décor and the music.

“Liverpool does love this kind of music, Chic play here all the time to massive crowds, but we also wanted to do something where we weren’t competing with ourselves, so we didn’t want another dive bar like Motel and Teddy’s.

“Gloria’s will be something different to any disco experience that the city’s seen before, a bit more immersive, but it will still have all the elements that people want so it’ll have the soundtrack, bar, the booths and somewhere you can go and dance if you want to.”

The DGB team took over the building when MOJO moved to Hanover Street in summer 2023 before it announced its closure in March this year.

“Everything has been completely ripped out and we’ve started from scratch,” adds Sean. “It’ll still have the raised levels that MOJO did, but they’ve been taken out and rebuilt.

“As well as at least four huge disco balls, we’re putting in a pink resin floor so it’ll look like you’re standing or dancing on pink water and we’ll have state of the art lighting to give it more wow.

“We’ll be going all-in with the theme and the way we’re building the stage and putting the DJ at the centre of everything, the idea is you can’t help but dance.”

With an opening scheduled for late summer, probably September, Sean says Gloria’s looks likely be their biggest project to date.

It follows the most recent new addition, French-style jazz bar Petit Café on Lark Lane, which opened this April, making it three Petit Cafes altogether – joining the original on Berry Street, and a second on Allerton Road.