The group, co-founded by Silla Bjerrum and Jeremy Rose, will open a venue at Billingsgate fish market in the first week of September, which will service the homes and businesses of Canary Wharf and surrounding areas.
Featuring just six covers, the site will focus solely on delivery and takeaway, as Feng Sushi looks to grow the off-premises side of the business.
“We didn’t want to go into Canary Wharf itself with a big restaurant; we just wanted to build up the delivery and do that with a pure delivery concept,” Bjerrum told BigHospitality.
“Our Borough Market site delivers a lot to Billingsgate, particularly at the weekends, so we think there’s a good market for us there for good quality sushi delivered to people’s desks.
“Because it is early days and we are the first food operator like this going into Billingsgate, we may develop more covers at a later stage.”
Simultaneous growth
Feng Sushi intends to grow the delivery side of the business in tandem with its eat-in restaurants, and will open its eighth site in West Hampstead in the autumn that combines both aspects.
A first for Feng Sushi, the 34-cover restaurant situated in West End Lane will segregate the deliveries from the dining experience by having two separate entrances.
“We want to keep the eat-in experience uninterrupted by deliveries because some of our stores have very busy delivery services,” Bjerrum said.
Feng Sushi, which is backed by entrepreneur Luke Johnson, intends to sign another lease before Christmas with a view to opening in the new year, and has plans to open a further four venues in 2012.
“We’d like to carry on serving nice residential areas as we’re already doing, so we’re looking in Islington, Shoreditch, Clapham and Chiswick where we can offer both eat-in and delivery services.
“We’re looking to grow both sides of the business at the same rate. Delivery is the core of our business but we’re also working a lot on enhancing the eat-in experience - we’re launching newly designed menus in September that are much cleaner and easier to understand and will have training programmes in place to make Feng Sushi more of a dining experience.”
Feng Sushi, which currently has restaurants and delivery outlets at Chalk Farm, Fulham Road, Notting Hill Gate and Royal Festival Hall, is also planning to grow its catering offer simultaneously.