Friday five: the week's top restaurant stories
- The UK arm of Karen’s Diner, the Australia-founded restaurant group known for its rude service and staff with attitude, has gone into liquidation amid ‘mounting financial pressure’. The group’s recently announced summer pop up tour is now ‘very unlikely to take place’ after Jeremy Frost and Patrick Wadsted of Frost Group Limited were named as liquidators for Viral Ventures UK, which is owned by Australian parent company Viral Ventures Global. Their appointment comes after the presentation of a winding up petition by a creditor. According to its most recent accounts filed to Companies House, Viral Ventures UK owes more than £400,000 to creditors.
- Hostmore, the owner of the TGI Fridays UK franchise, has filed for administration and suspended its listing on the London Stock Exchange. The future of the group had been in doubt since it abandoned plans for an all-share acquisition of TGI Fridays in the US earlier this month, and in a business update this week it was confirmed that Daniel Smith and Julian Heathcote of Teneo Financial Advisory Limited had been appointed as joint administrators. Hostmore said that filing for administration would have no direct impact on the operations of the trading subsidiary, Thursdays, and that all restaurants continue to trade. It added a sale of the group’s 87-strong corporate estate was ongoing and still expected to be completed by the end of September.
- Birmingham-based chef restaurateur Brad Carter will no longer be involved in upcoming London restaurant Undercroft. In the crypt of Mayfair’s St George’s Church, Undercroft was supposed to have marked Carter’s debut in the capital. No reason has been given for Carter - who attracted a Michelin star for his cooking at his now closed Carters of Moseley restaurant - disassociating himself with the project. The creation of music industry entrepreneur Martin Priestnall, the 107-cover Undercroft had been set for a summer launch. It is understood that the significantly delayed project has been delayed further and now may not go ahead.
- Simon Rimmer’s Greens restaurant in Sale, Manchester, has closed its doors little more than two years after its launch. A note on the vegetarian restaurant’s social pages confirmed that the restaurant had been closed ‘with immediate effect’ following a decision by the board of directors and shareholders. “We’ve done everything possible to make this work, but it is now clear the business is untenable,” the statement read. “We’d like to thank everyone, team members and guests, who have been on the Greens journey with us.”
- A crackdown on zero-hour contracts by the Government could see companies forced to offer all staff regular hours after three months. The Telegraph reports that Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner and Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds have told bosses and unions that they were working on a policy which could force employers to offer zero-hour workers a regular contract after 12 weeks. One person involved in the discussions said the legal obligation would follow McDonald’s lead, after the fast food chain offered staff the chance to switch to contracts with minimum guaranteed hours back in 2017. At the time it said most chose to stay on flexible contracts.
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