Friday Five: the week's top news
- Market Halls has launched a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) proposal for four group entities in a bid to secure its future following more than a year of closure. The London-based food hall operator, which has three locations across the capital in Victoria, Fulham and the West End, announced in July last year that it had taken the decision to keep all of its sites closed while social distancing remains. With Market Halls now not anticipating being able to reopen until Summer 2021 at the very earliest, and with trade creditor balances continuing to mount-up, the group is taking ‘decisive action’ to safeguard its future by undertaking a financial restructuring programme funded by a new investor in the business, Gees Court Partners. Four group entities - Try Market Halls Limited, Try Market Halls Fulham Broadway Limited, Try Market Halls Victoria Limited, and Try Market Halls Oxford Street Limited - are each launching a CVA.
- Terroirs has permanently closed its central London natural wine bar and restaurant in Covent Garden. In an announcement on Instagram, the group said it had taken the ‘tough decision’ to close the doors at Terroirs Central for good, but did not give a reason for the closure. The statement read: “It is with a very heavy heart, but also a lot of happy memories, that we have taken the tough decision to close the doors at Terroirs Central, for good. “It has been an amazing journey, and we have made so many friends along the way. We’d like toextend a huge thank you to everyone who has supported us over the last 13 years. “From our amazing team to our beautiful guests, we literally couldn’t have done it without you.” Terroirs was one of London’s first natural wine bars, and was a renowned industry hangout. It was founded in 2008 by Ed Wilson, Oli Barker, and Eric Narioo of UK-based wine importing company Les Caves de Pyrene.
- Michel Roux Jr has announced that his two-Michelin star fine-dining restaurant Le Gavroche in Mayfair is to pause offering a lunch service as a result of understaffing. In a statement posted to the restaurant’s Instagram page, Roux Jr cited the staffing troubles being faced by restaurants up and down the country, including at Le Gavroche, since the lifting of lockdown, partly blaming new Brexit regulations for the vacuum of available staff. As a result, it has been decided that Le Gavroche will open for dinner only from 5pm on 14 June until further notice. Roux Jr said: “As you are all more than aware, the past year has sadly taken a great toll on the hospitality industry, but with restaurants finally being allowed to re-open to everybody’s relief there is still a trickle effect of major problems affecting our industry, in this instance, staffing. Since opening, restaurants up and down the country have suffered greatly with staffing problems partly due to new Brexit regulations as well as there now being a major lack of well-trained hospitality professionals since the pandemic struck."
- Chef Adam Handling is to relocate his sustainably-focused restaurant concept Ugly Butterfly to Cornwall, launching at the Carbis Bay Estate in Saint Ives in early August. The 65-cover restaurant will offer an all-day dining experience that uses ingredients ‘carefully sourced’ from in and around Cornwall. Trims and offcuts from ingredients used in the restaurant will be repurposed to create drinks and snacks for the bar area, which holds a further 65 covers, in a bid to illustrate ‘there is no such thing as food waste’. “Everything we do at our restaurants and bars is based on the location and surroundings,” says Handling, who opened sustainability-focused pub The Loch & The Tyne in Windsor last month.
- Daylesford founder Carole Bamford will open a second Cotswold pub early next year. In Oddington, The Fox follows the success of The Wild Rabbit, which launched in 2013. The Fox will be a less high-end than The Wild Rabbit - which briefly held a Michelin star when Tim Allen was running the kitchen - with a hearty menu planned featuring burgers, fish & chips and Sunday roasts, made with local organic ingredients. The pub will seat up to 90 covers inside while a terrace will accommodate a further 40 people. The pub will also have eight bedrooms. Daylesford is a pioneer of organic farming with an upmarket restaurant and retail business that includes four Daylesford Farmshop & Café in central London and a further site in Gloucestershire.
