M Restaurants to launch £1.5m crowdfunding campaign for third site
London-based restaurant group M Restaurants is set to launch a £1.5m crowdfunding campaign on Monday 3 October to raise capital for the expansion of its local M:Social concept.
The company, founded by CEO Martin Williams, has also made new appointments to its board, as it gears up to open a third site, this time in Twickenham.
There are currently two multi-faceted M restaurants in Threadneedle Street and Victoria Street in London. The company is now hoping to raise £1.5m via the Seedrs crowd-funding platform to open an M:Social in Twickenham where the business is already at heads of terms for a new site, as well as to add a private members' lounge called M Den to its Threadneedle Street venue.
Investments starting at £200 will be welcomed on the site, offering the potential to double that sum when the EIS-qualified, equity-based investment is anticipated to mature in 2019.
Meanwhile, the company, which is backed by a consortium of investors (including Marisa Drew, a managing director at Credit Suisse bank, retired footballer Andy Cole and entrepreneur Annabel Schild), has added Schild and Mike Xenakis, former MD of Europe at Opentable, to its board as non-executive directors.
"Interest around the M brand and our campaign has been phenomenal - I am confident when we launch on Monday we will have raised seven figures in a few days."
Long term, Williams' company aims to build its two flagship central London sites to maturity as well as growing the brand through two smaller less central venues, of which Twickenham is one. M Restaurants said in its equity investment pack, published to coincide with the launch of its funding campaign, that these would offer a casual, lower price point variant of its current offering and would have materially lower rents and capital expenditure requirements.
Around £1.1m of the funds raised will required for M's next restaurant, with £100,000 for the new M Den in Threadneedle Street, and £400,000 as additional working capital for the business. The second M:Social restaurant will be funded from cash or bank debt.
Williams opened M Threadneedle Street in 2014, with two 100-cover restaurants, M:Grill and M:Raw, as well as a cocktail bar, wine tasting room and private dining. The equity investment pack shows that itis projected to reach total sales of just under £3.2m in 2016 and EBITDA of £464,000.
M Victoria Street opened in early 2016 and has an oval grill room, raw bar, public and private members' bars and a wine tasting room plus private dining and events spaces. It is projected to have total sales of nearly £2.6m in 2016 and an EBITDA loss of just under £270,000. That is forecast to turn to a slim profit in 2017.
By 2019, when the investment is expected to mature, M Restaurants hopes to reach total sales of £5.2m and EBITDA of £1.3m at Threadneedle Street, and total sales of £4.6m and EBITDA of just over £1m at Victoria Street.
Since Williams founded the group it has won several awards including the Best Use of Technology Award at this year's Cateys.
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