Sir Charles Dunstone’s Freston Road Investment to bring US pizza chain MoD to UK after Five Guys success September 14, 2015 Sir Charles Dunstone has moved from backing burger joints to pizza chains after striking a joint venture agreement to bring US restaurant chain MOD Pizza to Britain. MoD, which stands for Made on Demand, allows customers to pile as many toppings as they want on their artisan-style pizza base for the same fixed price. It [...]
Mayfair Equity Partners leads race for Yo! Sushi in deal worth £100m September 13, 2015 THE RACE for Yo! Sushi is heating up after a new buyout firm run by former head of Lloyds’ private equity arm emerged as a frontrunner to buy the restaurant chain, in a deal valued at around £100m. Mayfair Equity Partners was founded earlier this year by Daniel Sasaki, who previously led Lloyds Banking Group’s [...]
JD Wetherspoon hits out at government’s Living Wage September 11, 2015 Pub chain JD Wetherspoon has become the most recent in a series of companies to hit out at the government’s Living Wage. In the company’s preliminary yearly results, the pub chain said the government is putting pubs under financial strain. Read more: National living wage – All businesses will end up paying it – but [...]
Living Wage: Morrisons boss Dave Potts joins Next, John Lewis and Whitbread in warning of extra staff costs September 10, 2015 The cost of the National Living Wage is stacking up rapidly. Morrisons has today admitted that the introduction of the government-imposed measure next year is going cost the supermarket group “10s of millions of pounds” on top of the costs the business is already battling with to turn itself around. From April next year, businesses [...]
Sports Direct AGM: Mike Ashley can ignore the outraged of Twitter – but in the new world order, he ignores investors at his peril September 10, 2015 Shareholder unrest over corporate governance or transparency is nothing new, but in this age of social media and e-petitions, public outcry over certain business practices is often louder than it once was. Last week, public opinion, along with a dollop of union pressure, forced restaurant chain Pizza Express to change its policy over tipping. [...]
Salt & Honey restaurant review: London’s modern European Bistro is the bees knees September 8, 2015 28 Sussex Pl, W2 2TH Tel: 020 7706 7900 FOOD ★★★★★ VALUE ★★★★★ ATMOSPHERE ★★★☆☆ Cost for two with wine: £100 The internet has done for the food scene what cheap international flights did for travel: it made it accessible. There are no secrets – a new restaurants barely needs to open its doors before an army of [...]
Exploring Oman, the wild west of the east September 7, 2015 Camping always evokes familiar memories: pitching tents at night, muddy fields, the taste of a stodgy pasta meal cooked over a gas stove in the rain, and a chorus of sheep baa-ing at dawn like a congregation of tone-deaf pensioners at a Sunday service. At least it did for me until earlier this year when [...]
How the City got its mojo back September 6, 2015 A decade is a long time, and a decade in the City feels like a lifetime. You only need to look out the window to see how much things have changed. New cathedrals of glass and steel climb over the horizon – to the chagrin of traditionalists – while others are quietly and efficiently razed [...]
Burrito boom: How Mexican restaurants Chipotle, Chilangos, Tortilla, Benito’s Hat and Poncho 8 have taken over London September 4, 2015 Fast food has become fashionable in London and the burrito has become one of the trendiest meals in town. The biggest Mexican food chains Chilangos, Benito's Hat, Tortilla, Poncho 8 and Chipotle account for 47 outlets in the capital when in 2007 only Chilangos existed. Read more: Four charts showing the rise of the posh burger [...]
Pizza Express bows to pressure on tips September 3, 2015 Pizza Express has bowed to growing pressure over its tipping system and agreed to remove the eight per cent administration fee it charges for customers paying their bill with card. The move, which workers and unions have been calling for over the last few months, means staff will receive the full amount left for [...]