In an interview with The Sunday Times, Molnar said the premium bakery chain, which currently operates around 150 sites, is targeting £300m in sales next year.
He estimates that the rise in employer national insurance contributions and the minimum wage combined with the reduction in business rates relief will add between £1.5m and £2m to Gail’s costs, and prices will have to go up as a result.
However, Molnar added that he is doing everything he can to limit this.
“Nobody is making a tonne of money out of making food well,” he insisted.
Molnar’s comments come after it emerged late last month that Gail’s had instructed Goldman Sachs to run an auction of the business next year, which could value the group by as much as £500m.
While Molnar refused to be drawn on the sale process, he did discuss the group’s plans for expansion.
He said the crisis in Britain’s town centres has been beneficial for his business.
“There are lots of empty sites on the high street. You get really attractive deals [from landlords]. That’s been really fundamental to us.”
He added that the vacant properties are ‘mostly banks’.
“The first day we opened in Cobham [Surrey], I sat down having a coffee next to this older gentleman. He said: ‘You know what this place was before it was a bank? It was a bakery’. So it was a bakery built to be a bakery. Then it became a bank. And now it’s back to being a bakery again,” Molnar added.
