Busaba Eathai bought out of administration for £75,000

Busaba Eathai was bought out of administration for £75,000 after struggling with regional expansion.

Last month, the Thai restaurant group was acquired by Seaco Investments after appointing administrators Leonard Curtis on 16 July.

The transaction saved around 240 jobs at the restaurant chain, which operated six restaurants in London and one site in Essex at the time of sale.

According to the administrators’ report, the £75,000 offer included £65,000 for chattel assets, stock and works in progress and £10,000 in goodwill.

Secondary preferential claims (priority taxes including VAT, PAYE and employees’ National Insurance Contributions owed to HMRC) were estimated at around £5.3m.

The administrators said they are "currently uncertain" as to whether there will be sufficient funds to pay this off.

Busaba Eathai was founded by restaurateur Alan Yau in London’s Soho in 1999. The restaurant, which initially traded under a different name, was changed to Busaba and incorporated as a company in 2003 to focus on expansion.

At its peak, Busaba had 16 restaurants, including sites in regional cities such as Manchester and Liverpool.

The report said: “Although this expansion was initially successful for the company, the Manchester restaurants were never able to obtain the same levels of commercial success as the London restaurants and therefore in 2016, the decision was made to close the company’s Manchester and Liverpool restaurants to refocus its business on its core London market.”

In 2020, Busaba was sold to Tniu and entered into a Company Voluntary Arrangement with its creditors, leading to the closure of four of its sites.

In 2022, it returned to expansion, opening two restaurants outside of London in Oxford and Cardiff. However, both were “not commercially successful” and closed in 2023.

Busaba attributed its failings to the downturn in high street restaurant trade following the pandemic, the war in Ukraine, and work from home culture, as well as increased government taxation on National Insurance and the National Minimum Wage.