Chairman Debbie Hewitt said: “The board has moved quickly to undertake a review of the operating strategy and we now have clarity on the issues facing our leisure brands, particularly Frankie & Benny’s”.
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The Restaurant Group announced it is to close 33 of its United Kingdom outlets following a pre-tax loss of £22.5million for the first half of the year.
The news comes as The Restaurant Group released interim results for the 27 weeks ended July 3, which showed that while total revenue rose year-on-year by 3.4% to hit £358.7m, like-for-like-sales dropped 3.9%.
Three Frankie and Benny American-style restaurants in Northern Ireland are closing with a number of job losses.
Restaurant Group’s other brands include Costa, Eat, Garfunkel’s, Chiquito, Coast to Coast, Brunning & Price and Joe’s Kitchen.
The company has reported that sales have fallen by 3.9% for the first half of the year, which is within its earlier guidance range, while pre-tax profits have slipped by 3.7% to £36.6m. Bosses say they will stick with the Frankie and Benny’s brand as it remains “relevant and popular”.
It said its Frankie & Benny’s chain had “suffered due to insufficient focus on value, unsuccessful menu development and poor operational execution”.
However, the group isn’t totally preoccupied with problems – it plans to open up to 28 new sites in 2016 as a whole, with 30 more in the pipeline for next year, and said trading has been improving in recent weeks.
Despite the quality clearly getting worse at the chain, the restaurant had introduced “significant price increases” and got rid of most of its value deals – which naturally drove people away.
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This month, the firm hurriedly whisked its old chief executive Danny Breithaupt out of the door, setting the table for Andy McCue, deciding a new leader was needed to implement the initial actions outlined in the review.
