Bill’s Restaurants Set to Expand as Confidence Returns to Casual Dining

Unlock Digest Editor for free

FT Editor Roula Khalaf picks her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.

Restaurant group Bill’s is set to reopen new sites in the latest sign of confidence in the UK’s casual dining sector following a series of pandemic-related closures.

The Richard Caring-owned chain, which has enjoyed record sales and returned to profit in 2023, will open “multiple sites across the UK” over the next two years, chief executive Tom James said. Two new sites will open before Christmas in Milton Keynes and at Street in Somerset, taking the total to 47.

According to James, the company has had “two really strong years of business and really strong growth.”

The move comes as the industry sees customers returning despite the cost of living crisis. Casual dining restaurants have been hit particularly hard by rising prices and the rise of takeaway options. By contrast, fine-dining restaurants and fast-food chains have benefited from consumers treating themselves to special occasions or offering discounts.

However, according to the Hospitality Market Monitor Report by consultancy firms CGA, NIQ and AlixPartners, the number of casual dining establishments has increased by 1.7 percent over the past 12 months to 5,167, with an average of three new establishments opening every week over the past six months.

That’s still 23 per cent below pre-Covid levels, but “we’re back to a stage where we have more locations open than closed,” said Graeme Smith, managing director at AlixPartners. With working patterns changing, inflation falling and wages rising, operators have “taken time to look at how customers are behaving… but now there’s the confidence to start looking at expansion again.”

In July, cafe-bar chain Loungers said it opened 36 new outlets in the year to April, taking its total to 257, accelerating its rollout.

Big Table Group, the company behind Café Rouge, is also betting on the industry’s recovery, buy Chiquito’s and Frankie & Benny’s restaurants were taken over by The Restaurant Group in October last year. The Big Table Group paid £1m for the chains while TRG paid the buyer £7.5m as part of the deal.

Bill’s was founded in East Sussex in 2001 and acquired by Caring in 2008, which also owns the Ivy chain and high-end restaurants such as Sexy Fish. The company has reduced its store count by more than 40 per cent from 78 at the start of 2020, just before the pandemic.

“With rising costs in the industry, there have been some [outlets] “It didn’t make financial sense and it held the business back from growing and achieving its potential,” James said.

But he added that cost pressures, from wages to rent, would persist. The market “will continue to be challenging, certainly for the next two years because of the financial situation,” James said. But “if you are a business that can be nimble, embrace new technology and maintain attractive pricing, the opportunity is there,” he added.

James said the new venues would be “hybrid” versions of the conventional restaurant and cafe-bar concepts that have been trialled since earlier this year in Newbury and St Albans, targeting both major city centres and rural communities.

He said they wanted to cater to a variety of customers – from families to coffee-buying and on-site working customers – by offering both a full-service restaurant and soft seating spaces.