Town Centre Restaurants completes secondary buyout

19 December 2006 by
Town Centre Restaurants completes secondary buyout

Town Centre Restaurants (TCR) has completed a secondary buyout, which has seen private equity group Gresham buy Bank of Scotland's 70% stake in the business for £48m.

The casual dining and café business, which runs the Café Giardino, Auberge and Azzurro brands, will use the cash to fund an aggressive rollout programme.

TCR chief executive Mark Winter said the group planned to double turnover from £30m to £60 in five years by growing from 53 to 100 units.

Winter said: "Bank of Scotland was brought to consolidate the business and take out a few loss-makers when we came of the stock market. Gresham will now give us a strong platform to deliver growth."

As part of the deal, two Bank of Scotland backers will be replaced on the board by Gresham directors Christian Bruning and Neil Scragg.

Richard Simpson, who formerly worked for leisure giant Whitbread and the Independent Restaurant Group, will become non-executive chairman.

TCR currently operates 40 Café Giardinos, nine Auberges, and four Azzurros. In five years time, Winter said there would be 80 Giardino sites and about 10 Auberge and 10 Azzurro units.

Midmarket dining matures >>

Giardino goes private and says farewell to founders >>

Town Centre Restaurants website >>

By Tom Bill

E-mail your comments to Tom Bill here.

Get your copy of Caterer and Hotelkeeper every week -

The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking