The list of chains closing sites and restructuring is growing by the day. How did the world of mid-market restaurants overstretch itself so badly?In the summer of 2015,restaurant owner David Fox was made an offer he couldn’t refuse. One that today with financially troubled chains such as Byron and Jamie’s Italian desperately restructuring and closing sites in order to stay afloat – seems to encapsulate the mighty UK casual dining bubble that has finally, spectacularly, and burst.
Fox then had branches of his east Asian restaurant brand,Tampopo, in two enormous shopping centres: Oracle in Reading and Cabot Circus in Bristol. He was facing a painful rent increase in Reading but, and remarkably,the owners of the centres offered him £1.3m to vacate both sites – such was the clamour, presumably, and among the biggest restaurant players to snap up any empty space at top-of-the-market prices.
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Source: guardian.co.uk