Mexican chain Chilango to open fifth London restaurant

The group, which is operated by Eric Partaker and Dan Houghton, has secured the lease on a 2,000 sq ft, previously vacant property on Chancery Lane.

It will provide seating for 40 covers and trading is expected to mirror that of Chilango’s Fleet Street location, which currently sees high volume at lunchtimes Monday to Friday and takes around £1m in revenue per year.

London-centric​

The acquisition falls in line with Chilango’s forward plan to expand at a rate of one restaurant per quarter, focusing primarily on the central London area.

“We’ve done what we wanted to do in the early stages by developing sites outside London to gain familiarity, but now we want to continue concentrating on London,” Partaker told BigHospitality.

“With a small team like ours it’s easier to focus on clustering our sites within a certain location, rather than having a lot of distant sites.”

Brighton postponed​

Earlier this year Chilango acquired the lease on a 60-cover site in Brighton’s North Laines​ with a view to launching over the summer, but the pair have since postponed plans to open outside of London.

“We decided to prioritise our openings by focussing on London,” he added. “We still have that lease but for now it’s just an asset we own – there’s no opening date on it as yet. We’ll focus on central London sites for the next two to three years at least before opening elsewhere.”

As well as Fleet Street, Chilango also operates restaurants at Upper Street, Meadowhall Shopping Centre in Sheffield and Bluewater Shopping Centre in Kent.