Friday five: the week's biggest hospitality stories
- Leon has launched what it says is the UK’s cheapest high street coffee subscription. The healthy fast food chain has created Roast Rewards, where for £25 a month subscribers can receive up to five barista-made drinks a day along with a 20% discount on its breakfast and all-day food menu - excluding meal deals. The offer goes head to head with Pret a Manger's coffee subscription model Club Pret, where for £30 a month subscribers also get up to five barista-made drinks a day and 20% off its entire menu.
- The team behind Spanish restaurant group Brindisa is opening a second site of its croqueta-focused brand Bar Kroketa. Opening at St Christopher’s Place in London’s West End on 10 June, it will join the original Bar Kroketa, which opened in Soho at the start of 2023. It will serve a seasonally changing lunch and dinner menu with a dedicated breakfast offer to launch in July.
- JKS Restaurants will open its latest London venture this summer, celebrating food from Punjab. Called Ambassadors Clubhouse, it will open at 25 Heddon Street in Mayfair on the site that was formerly refined Berber Mediterranean restaurant Momo. The 140-cover restaurant will be named after JKS founders Jyotin, Karam, and Sunaina Sethi's maternal grandfather, who was a former Indian ambassador, and will take inspiration from his summer house in Dalhousie (formerly part of Punjab) and north India’s abandoned party mansions.
- Entrepreneur Alex Young and front of house professional George de Vos will launch a wine bar and restaurant in Hackney’s upmarket De Beauvoir area later this summer. The kitchen at the 55-cover Goodbye Horses will be headed by Jack Coggins, whose CV includes Papi, Planque, The Baring and Hot 4 U. The format will be sharing plates with a focus on ‘seasonality, sustainability and creativity’.
- A couple who ate at five restaurants in Wales and left without paying, racking up bills of more than £1,000, have been jailed. Bernard McDonagh and his wife Ann McDonagh pleaded guilty to failing to pay their restaurant bills between August 2023 and April 2024 at Swansea Magistrates’ Court earlier this month. Ann McDonagh pleaded guilty to fraud and theft and was sentenced to 12 months in prison, while her husband was given an eight-month sentence.
