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Restaurant group Bill’s is set to restart opening new locations in the latest sign of confidence in the UK casual dining sector after the spate of closures induced by the pandemic.
The Richard Caring-owned chain, which saw record sales and returned to profitability in 2023, would be opening “multiple locations across the UK” over the next two years, said managing director Tom James. Two new sites will open before Christmas in Milton Keynes and in Street in Somerset, taking its total outlets to 47.
The company had enjoyed “two years now of really strong trading and really strong growth”, according to James.
The move comes as the sector sees customers return despite the cost of living crisis. Casual dining restaurants had been hit particularly hard by price rises and the growth of takeaway options. High-end restaurants and fast-food chains, in contrast, benefited from consumers treating themselves on special occasions or from their trading down.
However, the number casual dining sites has grown by 1.7 per cent over the past 12 months to 5,167 outlets, with an average of three new ones opening a week over the past six months, according to the Hospitality Market Monitor by consultancies CGA, NIQ and AlixPartners.
This is still 23 per cent lower than pre-Covid levels, but “we are back into a period where there are more sites opening than closing”, said Graeme Smith, managing director at AlixPartners. With changes in working patterns, with inflation easing and wages increasing, operators had “taken time to look at how the customer is behaving . . . but now have the confidence to start looking at expansion again”.
All day café-bar group Loungers said in July that it had opened 36 new businesses in the year through April, taking its total to 257 sites, accelerating the pace of its rollout.
The Big Table Group, the company behind Café Rouge, is also betting on the recovery of the sector, buying lossmaking Chiquito’s and Frankie & Benny’s restaurants from The Restaurant Group last October. The Big Table Group offered a token £1 for the chains while TRG paid the buyer £7.5mn as part of the deal.
Bill’s was founded in 2001 in East Sussex and acquired in 2008 by Caring, who also owns the Ivy restaurant chain and upmarket eateries such as the Sexy Fish. It reduced its number of outlets by over 40 per cent from 78 at the start of 2020, just before the pandemic.
“With the rising costs in the industry, there were some [outlets] that financially didn’t make sense, and they held the business back from growth and achieving its potential,” said James.
But he added that cost pressures, from wages to rents, persisted. The market is “going to remain challenging, certainly for the next two years because of the financial climate”, said James. But “if you’re a business that can be dynamic, embrace new technologies and keep a compelling offer, the opportunities are there”, he added.
James said the new sites would be “hybrid” versions of its conventional restaurants and café-bars which have been trialled since earlier this year in Newbury and St Albans, targeting both major city centres and rural communities.
They would aim to serve a wide range of guests — from families to customers buying a coffee and working from the sites — by offering both full-service restaurants and soft-seating spaces, he said.
