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 great UK casual dining bubble that has finally, spectacularly, burst.
Fox then had branches of his east Asian restaurant brand, Tampopo, in two huge shopping centres: Oracle in Reading and Cabot Circus in Bristol. He was facing a painful rent increase in Reading but, remarkably, the owners of the centres offered him £1.3m to vacate both sites – such was the clamour, presumably, among the biggest restaurant players to snap up any empty space at top-of-the-market prices.
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