Rosa’s, the London-based, six-strong Thai cafe concept, which was founded by British husband and Thai wife team Alex and Saiphin Moore, has secured £1.8m of new bank funding and two new sites in Brixton (Coldharbour Lane) and Shoreditch.
Alex Moore told M&C: “We are really happy to have reached agreement with Santander at the end of last year. Of the £1.8m facility, £1m is in senior debt and the balance is Growth Capital with deferred principal payments which will really help us speed up our expansion over the coming year without giving up any further equity in the business. Our cake just got bigger without our slice of it shrinking. We ended up raising more than we initially asked for as the bank liked the look of our offering, our financial year-to-date performance and our run rate numbers - the end of 2015 was particularly strong for us.”
Last year, it announced it had secured a 1,300sq ft site on Wilton Street, Victoria. The restaurant is currently open as a pop-up, Laos café, before the site undergoes extensive renovations to become the seventh Rosa’s Thai Café this May.
It plans to open on the former Granada Cars site in Brixton later this summer.
Moore said: “Our customers seem to really like eating our Thai food during the cold Autumn and winter months - which is ironic as Thai food evolved in such a hot environment. We plan to put the funds to good use - Rosa’s Victoria will open in May quickly followed by sites in Brixton and Shoreditch (not far from where we started out our very first market stall) which will bring us up to nine sites in total. We are particularly excited by our new Brixton site which we are planning to open in the summer which is in a great location right next to the market.”
Its initial plan was to grow to 10 restaurants by the end of 2017.
However, it is thought that with the right funding it can double the size of its existing estate in the capital in the short term.
