Bella Italia to open five new restaurants in 10 weeks

Italian-style chain Bella Italia is to open five new restaurants in the next 10 weeks, including in Filton, and Hemel Hempstead.

The Filton site is set to open this Monday (6 April), and will be a £900,000, 3,750 sq ft unit with 145 covers, located within the Abbey Wood Retail Park near Bristol Parkway railway station. It will be the brand's fourth site in the Bristol area, after its two central city venues and one at shopping mall Cribbs Causeway.

The Hemel Hempstead site is expected to open in Jarman Fields in July, and at 5,500 sq ft and 220 covers, will be one of the largest across the brand's estate. It will the last in this set of openings.

The others are expected for May, and comprise Bishop Centre, Taplow, near Maidenhead; Castlegate, Dudley; and Ashton Leisure Park, Ashton-under-Lyne.

Each site will be open all day, serving breakfast, lunch, and dinner, and offer a new, broader menu, including new family sharing options and a gelato ice-cream cart. Bella Italia has signed 15-year leases for each property.

Phil Derbyshire, property director at Casual Dining Group (formerly Tragus Group), which owns Bella, said: "These openings, all within a few weeks of each other, demonstrate perfectly our strategy of targeting out-of-town leisure and retail schemes in, or close to, high catchment areas, while continuing to open sites on busy high street and in prime shopping centres across the UK."

The brand has 90 restaurants across England, Scotland and Wales, with recent openings including Peterborough, Milton Keynes, and Bexley Heath. Last year it announced plans to expand significantly, hoping to open 100 new restaurants within the next five years.

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