Seasoned restaurant entrepreneur Ged Lynch has branched out on his own and sold his stake in pub and restaurant group Nose Ltd, M&C understands.
Lynch said he sold his shares in the company to the group’s other partners.
“It was an amicable departure, I’d been there 10 years but sometimes you want to get back to doing your own thing.”
Nose Ltd operates US/Australian-themed bar and cafe concept Mud Crab in Manchester, Didsbury, West Bridgford and Sheffield; sourdough pizza concept 6/Cut in Monton; and gastropub concept Pointing Dog in Cheadle Hume, Bakewell and Sheffield.
The group’s “high class junk food” concept format Kitchenette on Manchester’s Oxford Street has since closed.
Lynch told M&C he used the capital from selling his stake in Nose Ltd to purchase a site in Bramhall, Cheshire, which previously traded as Beluga.
He has now re-branded the site as a 150 seat sourdough pizza concept Public Market, which opened its doors in December following a significant refurbishment.
“It’s something I’ve wanted to do for quite a while,” Lynch said.
The concept centred around a wood fired oven which acted as the main cooking source for the restaurant and also provided all the site’s hot water and under-floor heating requirements, he said.
“It’s a low cost model to a degree….the oven reaches temperatures of 500 degrees so we reclaim heat from the flue – we don’t have a conventional mechanical extract, we just have the flue from the pizza oven.
“We take the heat from the flue and feed it into a heat reclaim and then that goes and feeds the water tanks that supplies all the hot water for the underfloor heating.
“I’ve been in the industry a long time and the mechanical extract system is expensive and uses a lot of energy.
“The flue doesn’t need mechanical assistance - therefore it’s a low-cost model.”
Lynch said he was developing Public Market’s takeout system, but had been hampered by the lack of delivery options.
“I was hoping that Deliveroo would be coming to this area but they’re moving a little more slower than they thought.
“I might set up my own delivery service which I didn’t particularly want to do, because no doubt as soon as I set it up and get it going they’ll announce that they’re coming to this area.”
He said he was currently in talks over two more sites in the wider area, one in west Didsbury and another that he wasn’t yet ready to disclose.
Lynch said he was confident they would both be in operation by the end of the year. Both would be pizzeria concepts.
