Chop’d, the London-based group, has acquired the Salad Bowl - a complementary two-strong salad bar group in Liverpool - marking its entrance into the north west, M&C Report has learnt.
The group, led by Eddie Holmes, is planning to have five Chop’d outlets across Liverpool and Manchester by the end of 2015 – including the two existing Salad Bowl sites in Liverpool city centre.
Holmes said the two sites will become amalgamated into the Chop’d format in the summer and co-founders Matt Cole and Adam Myers will oversee the group’s growth in northern markets concentrating on the northwest and across the Pennines.
He said Chop’d currently has offers in on a number of sites in Manchester where it hopes to have established two or three outlets by the end of the year.
“Rather than an acquisition part of the deal is that the two guys is that the two founders are going to be working with us to roll out in the northwest.”
Salad Bowl has been trading since 2012 when Meyers and Cole established the first site. Similarly to Chop’d it offers meals to go that are made to order. It has one purely grab & go site while the other offers a wider variety of salads and meals.
“Salad Bowl is a nice, young simple business that trades very well and is rapidly growing. We thought that we could combine our expertise to grow more quickly,” Holmes told M&C. “We share a similar ethos on food: Adam is a trained chef and their driving force is the quality of food. With any deal the working relationship is the most important thing.
“To have done this ourselves would have been logistically harder and also the existing business has an existing customer base. They know the cliental and market very well so we have hit the ground running with a good supply chain and all the things we need.”
Holmes said by bringing the companies together Meyers and Cole will be able to concentrate on their strengths – food and marketing – while benefitting from Chop’d established systems for “mundane tasks” such as accounting and administration.
Meanwhile in Chop’d’s London stronghold it has refurbished its original site in Leadenhall and at Canary Wharf, which have both reopened this week.
