One of the restaurant trade’s more flamboyant innovators has cashed in his chips and is taking a backseat – for the time being at least.
Simon Woodroffe, founder and chairman of Yo! Sushi, has sold his controlling stake in the business. The deal allows the management team the opportunity, resources and incentive now to guide the restaurant venture onto the next stage of its development.
Yo! is a great entrepreneurial success story; Woodroffe one of the market’s most charismatic heroes. But Yo! is also a business tale of investor caution, of the tensions involved in harnessing creativity to management discipline, and of simply knowing when to step away. A business story for our time.
Managing director Robin Rowland has pulled together a refinancing deal, which has seen Woodroffe reduce his stake to 22% and take on a non-executive role. Private equity house Primary has taken just over 60% of the equity in the company, effectively funding a buy-in by Rowland and his senior management team. Rowland already had an equity stake, but other directors have also now been drawn in. Between them, the management have just over 17% of the business, currently valued at somewhere between £10m and £12m.
Importantly for Rowland he now has the funds to start moving the concept forward.
The deal has been long in coming, would-be investors apparently nervous of Woodroffe’s maverick reputation and his constant seeking of new projects on which to hitch the Yo! brand – hotels and spas being the more obvious.
It is a credit to Rowland, Woodroffe and the new backers that a deal has eventually been fashioned that all can buy into. The company has been tight for cash for 15 months or so. Rowland now has the funding to grow Yo! Sushi restaurants in the UK and internationally, including the USA.
The plan is to double the size of the business from the current 15 sites. Four UK sites can be expected to be pruned, but the rest is all expansion, with Selfridges in Birmingham and Dubai opening this month. The Poland Street site in Soho, London, is being revamped and Rowland expected to add four new international franchisees. He hasbig hopes for Greece, Spain and the US.
And what of Simon Woodroffe? It is unlikely that the feet inside those signature yellow shoes will be put up for long. He still owns the rights to the Yo! brand, and the Yotel and Yo! Spa concepts can expect to receive a lot more of his attention and personal investment.
The market needs innovators like Woodroffe and brands like Yo! to succeed. And while investors made find original thinking disconcerting, it still needs to backed and encouraged. It is just at which point of the business development cycle that card is played.
Timing, as they say, is everything.
Simon Woodroffe, founder and chairman of Yo! Sushi, has sold his controlling stake in the business. The deal allows the management team the opportunity, resources and incentive now to guide the restaurant venture onto the next stage of its development.
Yo! is a great entrepreneurial success story; Woodroffe one of the market’s most charismatic heroes. But Yo! is also a business tale of investor caution, of the tensions involved in harnessing creativity to management discipline, and of simply knowing when to step away. A business story for our time.
Managing director Robin Rowland has pulled together a refinancing deal, which has seen Woodroffe reduce his stake to 22% and take on a non-executive role. Private equity house Primary has taken just over 60% of the equity in the company, effectively funding a buy-in by Rowland and his senior management team. Rowland already had an equity stake, but other directors have also now been drawn in. Between them, the management have just over 17% of the business, currently valued at somewhere between £10m and £12m.
Importantly for Rowland he now has the funds to start moving the concept forward.
The deal has been long in coming, would-be investors apparently nervous of Woodroffe’s maverick reputation and his constant seeking of new projects on which to hitch the Yo! brand – hotels and spas being the more obvious.
It is a credit to Rowland, Woodroffe and the new backers that a deal has eventually been fashioned that all can buy into. The company has been tight for cash for 15 months or so. Rowland now has the funding to grow Yo! Sushi restaurants in the UK and internationally, including the USA.
The plan is to double the size of the business from the current 15 sites. Four UK sites can be expected to be pruned, but the rest is all expansion, with Selfridges in Birmingham and Dubai opening this month. The Poland Street site in Soho, London, is being revamped and Rowland expected to add four new international franchisees. He hasbig hopes for Greece, Spain and the US.
And what of Simon Woodroffe? It is unlikely that the feet inside those signature yellow shoes will be put up for long. He still owns the rights to the Yo! brand, and the Yotel and Yo! Spa concepts can expect to receive a lot more of his attention and personal investment.
The market needs innovators like Woodroffe and brands like Yo! to succeed. And while investors made find original thinking disconcerting, it still needs to backed and encouraged. It is just at which point of the business development cycle that card is played.
Timing, as they say, is everything.
