The French bakery chain is looking at converting some of its traditional format sites to the Paul le Café format, CEO Mark Hilton told MCA.
While the model, found elsewhere in Europe, is not yet in operation in the UK, Hilton believes it could offer the business opportunities for growth in the future.
“We have identified a couple of stores that fit the criteria […] and I think that over the next 12 months we will refurbish and upgrade a couple of those stores into the Paul le Café format,” he explained.
Both the traditional model – which has a greater variety of products – and the café format are what he sees as the key models for the UK market, with kiosks still an option for growth as an when the right opportunities arise.
The business, which last month announced that it had secured its first UK franchise partner for growth outside the capital, found that sites in London village locations, such as Richmond and Hampstead Heath, performed very well during Covid.
Paul is therefore looking to focus more on opening sites in those kinds of locations than other areas where it has a presence in the capital, such as The City and the West End, Hilton explained.
“I don’t think that we are going to necessarily change any of the criteria in terms of where we put locations, and the key drivers of what help us determine a potential location as being viable, but I think we will change the priority.
“So, we will look more aggressively in those village-type locations, whereas in the past we were equally focused on The City or the West End.”
Stay tuned for the full interview with Mark Hilton, to be published soon.
