MeatLiquor to open restaurant in Bloomsbury's Brunswick Centre

09 November 2020 by
MeatLiquor to open restaurant in Bloomsbury's Brunswick Centre

MeatLiquor co-founder and managing director Scott Collins has said he is "delighted" to be opening a new restaurant in the Brunswick Centre in London's Bloomsbury at the end of the month.

The opening ensures the group can retain the team from its King's Cross site (pictured), which closed last week.

The King's Cross restaurant closed for good after three years of operation when it shut its doors at 10pm last Wednesday ahead of England's second lockdown.

The new venue, a former Las Iguanas, which has around 110 covers indoors and a further 110 covers outdoors, is due to open for takeaway and delivery in the last week of November ahead of restrictions lifting on 2 December.

Collins told The Caterer the landlord of the King's Cross restaurant offered to buy them out because he wanted to sell the property. "It was the site that I had the biggest concern for out of 11," he said.

In the meantime, he came into contact with the owner of the Brunswick Centre, Lazari Investments, and a "fantastic deal" was struck for what he described as "a brilliant site".

"We didn't lose anyone when we shut King's Cross because we knew this was happening," Collins said.

"This is a wonderful rainbow over the shitshow of 2020. We're pretty solid. We've knuckled down – we've tweaked recipes, we've tweaked operations. We've just taken the time to have a breather and look at everything and it's paid dividends hugely for the last three months. We're in very, very good shape."

Meanwhile, Collins hopes the industry gets more support dealing with landlords and rents to help businesses during the coronavirus crisis.

"We're lucky to have a couple of great landlords," he said. "It isn't the landlords' fault as we all know. But there has been no meditation from the government at all on it. We've been left to our own devices, which I don't think has helped anyone."

The group has eight other sites in London, as well as in Leeds and Brighton. Meatailer, the parent company of burger brand MeatLiquor, reported a spike in profits following a shake-up of the business two years ago with pre-tax profit of £265,000 for the year ended 30 June 2019.

The Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email

Start the working day with The Caterer’s free breakfast briefing email

Sign Up and manage your preferences below

Check mark icon
Thank you

You have successfully signed up for the Caterer Breakfast Briefing Email and will hear from us soon!

Jacobs Media is honoured to be the recipient of the 2020 Queen's Award for Enterprise.

The highest official awards for UK businesses since being established by royal warrant in 1965. Read more.

close

Ad Blocker detected

We have noticed you are using an adblocker and – although we support freedom of choice – we would like to ask you to enable ads on our site. They are an important revenue source which supports free access of our website's content, especially during the COVID-19 crisis.

trade tracker pixel tracking