Friday Five: the week's top news
- Boxpark has signed a lease to open its first restaurant outside London, on Shoreham seafront. The company is aiming to open Big Beach Box as a community hub in partnership with Dan Stockland of Hove's Big Beach Cafe. Boxpark will submit a planning application later this year.
- The Polpo restaurant group is searching for a "bigger and better" Soho site for its Spuntino restaurant after the landlord decided to take back the lease, and is offering a £10,000 finder's fee for anyone who can find an off-market opportunity. It comes after the company's creditor's agreed a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) last week. Both its Polpetto restaurant in Soho and Notting Hill site are on the market.
- The team behind London's Le Bab and Maison Bab restaurants are launching an ambitious high-end dining experience with a seven-course kebab tasting menu next month. Find out what to expect at Kebab Queen here.
- Chef Glynn Purnell is to open a fine dining restaurant in a former monastery in Coventry. The Grade 1 listed building will undergo an £8m restoration in June this year, part funded by a £4.3m National Lottery grant. The restaurant will be Purnell's third to open, joining his Michelin-starred Purnell's Restaurant and more relaxed Purnell's Bistro in Birmingham.
- Flat Iron managing director Jo Fleet has suggested there is "no number" on the scale of sites the steakhouse group could open, but admitted there is no longer any appetite in the industry to reach 100 or 200 restaurants. Speaking at MCA and Restaurant magazine's Generation Next event, Fleet said the tendency for casual dining groups to target hundreds of locations was "not going to happen anymore".
For more of this week's news, click here.
