What a difference a day makes. In the case of Tragus’s long mooted takeover of Spanish tapas chain La Tasca its seen cheeky property tycoon Robert Tchenguiz and friends launch a counter bid just 24 hours later. Muchos Gracis, Roger.
I say tomato, you say tumato some Say Pasta, which is handy as the fledgling chain is on the expansion trail.
Penne, penne, penne, as they say in pasta dreams.
If only everything was as simple as pasta but the continuing row over the government’s plans to turn us into a nation of gambling zombies has hit the buffers (again).
Whether we’ll ever see a super-casino in Manchester and smaller units proliferating around the UK is surely worth a flutter?
Hedging its bets, the Individual Restaurant Company officially revealed in interim results it had scrapped plans to expand Zinc, the brand acquired from Conran Restaurants (now D&D London), in favour of its own historic formats, especially Piccolino.
One Swallow may not a summer make but Crerar obviously has plenty of faith in the tarnished brand as this week it did a Victor Kiam and bought it along with 26 properties previously run by the collapsed Edinburgh and Swallow Inns Group .
Last orders for Greene King’s Mark Angela who’s leaving the company as it splits its managed pub division.
Maybe Angela will want to think twice at staying in the capital while planning his next move.
A splash in the Observer news paper last weekend revealed a number of big names such as the Langham, Savoy and Dorchester had failed environmental health inspections by Westminster council and had been branded ‘a serious danger to health’ as a result.
Chips or daddy? It’s a tricky one but I never did get on well with my father. Scotland’s education minister Hugh Henry has excited health campaigners by ruling school kids can have chips everyday if they wish, albeit the oven cooked variety.
Caterer Holroyd Howe has appointed its first UK sales director, Debi Siegenberg, who isn’t deep-fried either but does mark a first for the growing company [312429].
And on a cautionary note an Edinburgh hotel, the Caledonian Hilton no less, has been defrauded of £100,000 by a former accounts department employee [312428] who will be sentenced soon.
That’s all from the Wrap this week but do sleep soundly.
Quote of the week: “It took the Government two hours to see sense, yet Lyons couldn’t manage it in three years.” Travelodge chief executive Grant Hearn on the rejection of Sir Michael Lyons’s bed tax proposals.
by Chris Druce
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