Slim Chickens takes on former Shake Shack site in Cambridge Circus

The Boparan Restaurant Group-owned brand will open in the prime London location this spring in what will be its fourth venue in the capital. The brand already operates from sites in Marylebone, The Brunswick Centre in Bloomsbury and in Soho, where it took on the original Ed’s Easy Diner site.

Slim Chickens currently has 16 restaurants in locations across the country, including Bournemouth, Birmingham, Manchester, Gateshead, Exeter, Bristol and Cardiff, where the US brand made its UK debut.

Slim Chickens was founded in Arkansas in 2003 and now trades from more than 90 US restaurants. It has expanded steadily across the UK since BRG signed on a master franchise of the brand in 2018.

Boparan is also trialing two service robots​​ in one of its Slim Chickens restaurants, with a view to expanding their use across its wider estate. The KettyBot robots, designed and built by Pudu Robotics are being trialled at its newest Slim Chickens restaurant in Guildford.

Shake Shack took on the Cambridge Circus restaurant​​, which was formerly Bocca di Lupo founder Jacob Kenedy’s short-lived Vico restaurant, in 2017, in what was then its eighth restaurant in the UK. The restaurant closed last summer and the site has remained vacant ever since.

Property agents Shelley Sandzer and Hanover Green LLP acted for Shaftesbury for the deal.