Tortilla ‘aggressively hunting for new sites’

Tortilla is on the hunt for new locations so it can make the most of opportunities that present themselves in the wake of Covid.

Richard Morris, Tortilla managing director, told MCA’s Food to Go Conference was “quite aggressively” looking for new locations.

He said there was an opportunity from a commercial standpoint, and landlords were keen to work with the fast-casual brand.

He said: “We want to take advantage of the opportunities that will, sadly in some ways, present themselves.

“We will be very tough on our site credentials in terms of making sure they are absolutely the right locations.

“There are places available and we are looking at quite a few so that’s encouraging.”

Morris said Tortilla had opened four delivery-only kitchens since the lockdown which had been “tremendously successful”.

Dark kitchens were “a great business model” with “low capex and pretty good returns”.

However, the business was not operating under the illusion that what it was taking through dark kitchens now was going to be the same after lockdown. “Clearly that won’t happen.”

He said Tortilla would continue to look for delivery-only kitchens. “There’s a lot of operators out there with space for restaurants and businesses like ours so there’s lots of opportunity in that area.”

Tortilla has further spied opportunities for kiosks, and Morris said it planned to test that at Canary Wharf, in London’s Docklands, in the next couple of months.

“We are really having a look at all these various options and then we’ll then decide which are the best ones going forward,” he said.

Tortilla was, however, predominantly a restaurant business, that loved trading on high streets, in travel hubs, shopping centres, student locations and office parks and that was what it would continue to push for.