Esquires, the Canadian coffee shop franchise, is gearing up for a groundswell couple of years, that will see it open a further 15 sites this year, and 30 a year for 2019 and 2020, MCA has learnt.
Doug Williamson, UK managing director for Esquires, told MCA the business had just signed the first of a series of regional development agreements, the first deal made with a six site Esquires operator who has committed to opening 5-10 coffee shops for the next 10 years.
Williamson said after returning to the business four years ago, when it was in the midst of a CVA, with a “tired, bordering on irrelevant” estate, Esquires was in strong position to differentiate itself in the market.
He said the rebranded concept and new Coffee and Kitchen format was inspired by Antipodean café culture, with quality coffee at the core of its model, but scaled up and adapted to the local community.
Williamson told MCA: “What we’ve been doing over the last year is further distancing ourselves from ubiquitous high street coffee shops, and creating our own special place in the market
“In 2017 we came out of the gates and said ‘we’re ready to go’. The funnel was turned upside down. We are really exciting to have opened so many stores.
“2017 was a very exiting year for us, but 2018/19 will probably be groundswell years.”
Williamson said the expansion plans hinged on recruiting regional development partners, with two more deals in the pipeline in the North of England, and a further one in Scotland.
This will enable Esquires to add around 12-15 sites to its c37 strong estate this year, with an expected 30 sites a year from there.
On the evolution of the brand, Williamson said: “When I came back in 2014, Esquires was a pretty tired business. It was struggling with a CVA and the 24 shops were borderline irrelevant.
“In four years we’ve changed everything around and rebranded the entire estate.
“We admire what the Australian and New Zealand operators do, and we thought how can we scale that up?
“Coffee remains the core of our business, and centrepiece of the model, with the barista the star of the operation, but we enhance the coffee experience by having a high quality breakfast, brunch and lunch offer. It’s a bit of a shift.”
He said Esquires would continue to target neighbourhood and secondary locations, partly because high streets are too expensive, but also to enable the individual sites to adapt their offer to the local community.
He added: “Our stores change in almost every way, shape or form depending on what market we’re in. First and foremost, we localise the stores. We dial it up or we dial it down.”
