Ramen noodle restaurant group Tonkotsu has promoted Stephen Evans, former development director at Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK), from operations director to managing director, as the company puts in place the foundations to be able to “high achieve its potential”.
Co-founder Emma Reynold told MCA that the first quarter of the new year will also see a rebranding exercise for the group, which will turnover £6m this year, to provide a more consistent image while conveying Tonkotsu as “an accessible but not too mainstream brand - we don’t want to over brand it and lose the independent feel.”
The aim is then to open a further three Tonkotsus by the end of 2017.
Reynolds said she had her eye on a couple of sites in South London and it is likely all three will be within the capital “unless something amazing comes up.”
She said that in 2018, when the new head office team is bedded down, the group will more actively seek other locations, ideally with an hour of London, in urban centres such as Brighton, Cambridge and Bristol.
Evans stepped down from GBK last year after four years as development director to pursue other interests including his own consultancy firm. Previous to joining GBK, Evans was an acquisitions manager at Tragus and Nando’s.
He joined Tonkotsu earlier this summer as it geared up to open premium restaurant, Anzu, offering contemporary Japanese dishes in The Crown Estate and Oxford Properties’ £400m St James’s Market redevelopment.
The Emma Reynolds-led group will join Salt Yard, Duck & Waffle and Aquavit at the scheme with Anzu – a Japanese brasserie.
In September Tonkotsu opened its first unit outside London, at Selfridges in Birmingham.
Including the Selfridges outlets, there are now a total of seven Tonkotsus, one of which used to be the first Tsuru. Two Tsuru outlets remain and while there are no plans to convert them, the focus for expansion is very much on Tonkotsu.
In November, the group opened its first premium restaurant, Anzu.
Although it is already trading very well, Reynolds said the group viewed it as a one-off opportunity for co-founder Ken Yamada to exercise his desire to create dishes using more expensive ingredients.
Since his promotion Evans has pressed ahead with initiatives like the successful introduction of the UberEATS delivery service to three of the sites and putting his experience in site finding to use, allowing Yamada and Reynolds to focus on the newest restaurants.
Other recent appointments, mainly internal promotions, have been an operations manager, a head of drinks and an executive chef. The company is also on the brink of appointing its first finance director.
“It is all very grown up,” said Reynolds. “We didn’t start out thinking we would have x-number of restaurants in so many years, we just opened it and said ‘we’ll see how it goes.
“It has helped us grow in a good way and to recruit the right kind of people and develop a loyal customer base, but we can’t go to the next phase with that attitude. We have to have more structure with focus and targets.”
