Wingstop UK launches sale process

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Lemon Pepper Holdings, the master franchisee for Wingstop UK, has hired Goldman Sachs to explore a sale of the business after six years of rapid growth.

City sources told Sky News that the chicken-focused QSR brand, which was named as the fastest growing restaurant group in the UK by The Sunday Times 100 for the second year in a row back in June, initiated a sale process in response to unsolicited expressions of interest from potential buyers.

Goldman is understood to have begun issuing information about Wingstop UK to third parties in the last couple of weeks.

The likely valuation of the business is currently unclear and a spokesman for Wingstop UK declined to comment on the story.

Originally founded in the US in 1994, Wingstop arrived in the UK in 2018 and has subsequently grown its estate to 48 sites, most recently opening a 5,000sq ft site at Westfield Stratford City in London.

A further opening at Leeds’s White Rose Shopping Centre is planned for later this month with the group aiming to reach a 57-strong estate by the end of the year.

Last month, Wingstop UK’s co-CEO Chris Sherriff told MCA, Restaurant’s sister site, that the group is looking to open up to 200 sites over the next five years, with whitespace for further expansion.