Bundobust, the Indian-street food and craft beer bar concept, has started talks regarding taking on new investment, as it gears up to secure a site in Liverpool.
The Mayur Patel and Marko Husak-led concept, which already operates sites in Leeds and Manchester, hopes to sign a lease on a Liverpool site before the end of the year.
The pair told MCA’s sister publication Restaurant, that also hope open a production kitchen on the outskirts of Leeds, complete with an in-house brewery, which the pair estimate it could add £100,000 to the bottom line of each site.
“The bank has been good to us thus far and our current finance model is fine for doing one a year,” Husak told Restaurant. “But we need to move faster now. We’ve had some talks with potential investors. The main thing for us is finding someone we get on with and who has experience of rolling out stuff we like and – crucially – keeping it good. We don’t want this brand to lose its soul along the way.”
In Liverpool, the new site will be of a comparable size to Bundobust’s Manchester unit and is described as another “oddball” property.
“This is the third time we’ve ended up taking the first site we’ve seen in a city. We’re very specific,” said Patel. “We want sites that other restaurant brands probably would not be interested in. We don’t need the really glamorous sites with the huge premiums and we’re happy to do them up.”
“We had to put in service to the Leeds site and Manchester was a state,” said Husak. “We don’t mind making the investment in getting it up to scratch because we can use the money we have saved on premiums and rents.”
Set-up costs for Leeds were £160,000. The much larger Manchester site cost around £400,000, and the Liverpool site is expected to cost around £300,000.
With informal talks already under way, it seems likely that Bundobust will secure investment next year. In 2019, the pair hope to open two more restaurants in the north before heading southward. “We like the look of Newcastle and we certainly want to open in the Midlands,” said Patel.
“We will focus on large sites in large cities for the moment but there is certainly potential to fill in the gaps later on. We have more ideas, including a grab-and-go version of the concept.”
A full interview with the founders of Bundobust will appear in the December issue of Restaurant magazine. To subscribe please email customer.service@wrbm.com
