Slow start for Harvey Nicks' restaurant

Prism, the 120-seat restaurant in the City of London owned by department store Harvey Nichols, made a £300,000 loss in the year to 1 April.

Two-thirds of the loss related to pre-opening costs, Harvey Nichols said this week. Prism opened in April 1999.

The company's other stand-alone London restaurant, the 135-seat Oxo Tower, performed well. It made an operating profit of £1.06m, up from £886,000 the year before.

Turnover at the two restaurants reached £11.6m in the year to April. In the previous year the Oxo Tower alone turned over £8.8m.

Finance director Clive Morton said: "In the first 10 weeks of this year like-for-like turnover is 9% up at Prism and we are confident it will make a profit this year."

Harvey Nichols also runs the Fifth Floor restaurant at its flagship Knightsbridge store and the Fourth Floor restaurant at its Leeds store.

The company is planning to open stores in Edinburgh in 2002 and Manchester in 2003. Both will have restaurants.

The group would like to have five or six stand-alone restaurants in London and is looking for sites.

by Louise Bozec louise.bozec@rbi.co.uk