Leon has announced it is planning a further 20 store openings in Europe and the Middle East through its partnership with HMSHost International.
The healthy fast-food chain currently has already opened nine sites with the American highway and airport food-service company – three in the UK and six in the Netherlands, and is looking to extend its reach into key transport hubs.
The agreement with HMSHost International will see the brand eyeing up openings in railway stations and airports in the UK, Belgium, Germany, Switzerland, Denmark, Finland, Norway and the Netherlands, and airports only in the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Turkey, France and Spain.
“We are exploring opportunities in the Netherlands and in Spain. We are going to take it one by one as part of a longer term plan over a couple of years,” said Walter Seib, chief executive of HMSHost International, adding that a lot depended on the success of tenders. “But over the next two to four years, you will see Leon in more parts of Europe.”
Seib said Leon and HMS Host were looking at opening in a maximum of two countries per year.
He told MCA that a new site would open in the Netherlands later this year, and there is another in the pipeline at an airport in Spain which will open at either the end of 2018 or beginning of 2019.
While the sites will predominately be opened within travel hubs – airports and railways stations, Seib also told MCA there were possibilities to extend this outside HMS’s traditional transport focus, to include sites in shopping malls, for example, based on the success it has had with the Leon site it opened in Utrecht, which is in a shopping mall that is adjacent to a train station.
