Five Guys UK reports £3.89m loss

26-May-2014 - Last updated on 27-May-2014 at 12:03 GMT

Related tags Covent garden Report Liverpool

Five Guys recently opened its eigth site in Birmingham' Bullring

Five Guys UK, the popular US burger chain, has reported a loss of £3.89m in the period to 29 December 2013, as the cost of launching in the country saw administrative expenses reach £4.58m.

The company, which was incorporated in August 2012 and started trading from the Covent Garden site on 4 July 2013, opened three sites in total during the period (Covent Garden, Reading and Islington) and reported revenue of £3.6m.

The group, which opened it eighth UK site in Birmingham’s Bullring yesterday, said that the three sites “delivered on, or ahead of planned performance targets”, with trading margins achieving “our key gross profit KPI of c40%”.

Gross profit for the period stood at £1.4m, while cost of sales was £2.2m.

The joint venture backed by billionaire mobile mogul Charles Dunstone is believed to have invested c£2.3m in paying the premium for the Long Acre site in Covent Garden.

The company said it would build on its UK presence for the foreseeable future by undertaking “a programme of opening new stores”.

Since the start of the year, it has also opened in Bluewater, Guildford, Kingston and Manchester and has further openings lined up for this summer in Lakeside, Uxbridge and Westfield London.

It hopes to open in Leeds, Glasgow and Solihull before the end of the year and has a further site lined up for the new £18m extension of Whiteleys shopping centre in Fareham.

It hopes to have 20 open by the end of the year and has talked about targeting an estate of up to 250 sites in the UK.

Late last year, John Eckbert, managing director of Five Guys UK, told M&C Report that the group was ready to be aggressive when it came to its roll out this year after the group’s launch in Covent Garden exceeded expectations.

Earlier this year, TGI Friday’s paid a seven-figure premium for the Pesto site in Liverpool One, which is believed to be the highest paid in the North West of England and possibly for any restaurant unit outside London. The under bidder was Five Guys.

At around the same time, Wahaca secured the Coal site in Wimbledon for an opening later this year, for a premium that Coal chief executive John Gater found “too good to refuse”. Again Five Guys was believed to be the under bidder.

It understood that the group also paid a seven-figure sum for its latest site, the Del Villagio unit in Birmingham’s Bullring.

This story was published first on M&C Report. To subscribe call please contact Emily.croft@wrbm.com or call 01293 846578.