POD, the London-based, healthy fast food concept led by Tim Hall, is ready to return to the expansion trail after 12 months of consolidation and strengthening its head office, which has been completed with the appointment of former Pret employee Anton Read as operations director, M&C Report has learnt.
Hall told M&C Report that the 23-strong group was currently finalising its plans for “an aggressive rollout program” for 2014 focusing on further openings in the capital, although he didn’t rule out the brand making its debut outside London in the following 12 months.
He said that the expansion would be funded internally and that although private equity groups had shown an interest in the business “it didn’t need any external funding at present”.
The group, which reported turnover of £12.2m in its most recent financial year with EBITDA at £1.6m, currently has three of its smaller sites on the market - Fleet Street, New Road and Queen Victoria Street – as it looks to concentrate on its larger store format.
Hall said that the group had received offers on all three, but do to an upturn in trade at one of the sites it was considering taking that unit off the market.
He said that group’s next stage of expansion will be at a much more manageable pace of six sites a year, reaching 40 by the end of 2015.
The company doubled in size by the end of the financial year in October 2012 – an aggressive expansion rate that Hall says was too fast although necessary to establish the brand’s place in the exploding fast-casual sector.
