Caravan CEO: ‘We’ve been looking outside of London’

The co-founder of Caravan has said the business is looking at three or four new sites as it continues its gradual expansion.

Laura Harper-Hinton told the Northern Restaurant & Bar show in Manchester she was aiming to build a lasting business with Caravan and “not grow too quickly”.

Caravan was founded in 2010 and employs 550 people across its coffee roastery and restaurants, which number eight in London and one in Manchester.

Harper-Hinton said: “We’re hopefully opening another restaurant towards the end of this year, which will probably be London-based and has been in the pipeline for quite a long time.

“So, fingers crossed we can do that, because it’ll be super-cool project. And then we’ve been looking outside of London, because that’s really what we want to do, but in sort of internationally-minded places.

“We have this mantra that we only want to open in places that we want to hang out in. We’ve definitely got three or four that we’re looking at quite seriously, but nothing signed yet.”

Harper-Hinton opened the first Caravan in London with Chris Ammerman and Miles Kirby. The business became known for its all-day menu and its coffee, which it roasts itself and sells in Waitrose and Ocado and in a growing B2B market of hotels, coffee shops and co-working spaces.

The founding trio completed a management buyout to take back full control of Caravan this year with private equity firm Active Partners exiting the business after eight years.

Harper-Hinton said things would not be be “completely different” at Caravan from a management perspective going forwards. However, she added: “Being in full control and full ownership of the business definitely is a different pace for us and a different mentality.”