Iconic fish and chip restaurant Harry Ramsden’s is planning to open 50 restauarnts across Yorkshire under franchise agreement with Vikesh and Dimple Patel of JVP Ventures, who became the first franchisees signed by the company, post-acquisition, as part of its growth strategy.
The restaurants are planned to open over the next five years to include a mixture of full service restaurants with takeaway and the new traditional local format designed for towns and cities as well as suburbs across the county where the brand was born.
The Patels both have backgrounds in corporate finance but have spent the past four years growing a national chain of coffee shops called Love Coffee which currently has 34 sites.
Vikesh said: “First and foremost, to be able to bring Harry’s name back to his roots is really exciting, especially since both Dimple and myself were born and brought up in Yorkshire. Working with an established and recognised brand is absolutely key to franchising success and to my mind, Harry’s Ramsden’s is the most iconic brand this country has ever produced.
“Our confidence in the Harry Ramsden’s name is reflected in the fact that our initial investment is being financed personally. In the coming years, we will regularly plough our profits back into the business to achieve our ambition of having 50 new outlets opened within 5 years.”
Dimple added: “Currently, our main priority is finding suitable locations in major cities including Leeds, Bradford and Sheffield for 100+ seater restaurants, although we are keeping a close eye out for possible sites for the smaller, ‘traditional’ locals. The final mix of outlets will be dependent on the location and size of units available, however I think there will certainly be more opportunities for traditional locals in highly populated areas, so I would imagine these will feature heavily in our roll out plans. Regardless of the final mix, I would conservatively estimate that we will create around 500 jobs by 2018.”
The company, which last year said it had agreements in place to open 140 sites over the next 10 years and recently recorded a 9.7% increase in annual like-for-like sales, returned to its roots with the opening of a brand new outlet in Shipley earlier this month.
