Chaophraya to open new restaurant in Edinburgh
Thai restaurant group Chaophraya is to open a new restaurant in Edinburgh after securing £2.4m of investment.
The company, which recently opened the UK's largest Thai restaurant in Glasgow, will open the new site in Edinburgh next month. The move comes after it secured funding from Santander's Breakthrough programme for SMEs.
Chaophraya, which currently has restaurants in Leeds, Liverpool, Manchester, Sheffield and Birmingham, will also use the investment to extend its original Leeds restaurant and open another new site at the start of 2013.
The group was founded in 2004 by Martin Stead and Kim Kaewkraikhot, who opened their first restaurant in Leeds. The group has since branched out with its ChaoBaby concept, which is designed for shopping malls and has units in the Trafford Centre in Manchester and Meadowhall centre in Sheffield.
"We have been steadily growing our businesses since establishing our first restaurant eight years ago," said chief executive Stead.
"Our aim is to take the Chao experience to as many cities as possible but we had reached a stage in our lifecycle where accessing further finance to invest had become problematic. However, Santander's growth capital investment enables us to borrow against our future success without having to give up a slice of the business."
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By Kerstin Kühn
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