Giggling Squid, the fast-growing Thai restaurant group, is set to begin a beauty parade of advisors as it look to secure new investment to fund its next stage of growth with the sale of a minority stake.
The group, which is led by Andy Laurillard and set to send out pitch documents early next week, is on track to post FY turnover of c£12m in its current financial year and EBITDA of £2.7m, valuing at around £18m.
The 10-strong company, which has an average weekly turnover of c£20k, believes it can consolidate the Thai restaurant sector and that there is the potential to eventually grow to c150 sites in the UK.
The group has lined up openings in Clifton, Salisbury, Chichester and Guildford for this year so far and hopes to open 12 sites in total this year and another 18 in 2016.
The company has already received approaches from and had conversations with a number of private equity players.
Laurillard told M&C Report that he felt that it was the right time for the group, which is currently looking for a finance director and operations director, to explore external investment opportunities.
He said: “The progress the business has made over the last 18 months has brought us to this point where we need to take on advice in regards to our next stage of funding. There is a real opportunity for the brand to consolidate the market and achieve the goal of becoming the UK’s first national chain of Thai restaurants.
“We are going into places where there are independent Thai restaurants located in secondary locations taking £8k to £10k a week, opened in central locations and doubled that sales figure. We believe we can repeat that across the country.”
The company will open its next site in Clifton, Bristol in February, followed by units in Chichester in March and Salisbury in April/May.
