Clockjack to open City ‘delivery hub' amid high rents

Rotisserie chicken restaurant brand Clockjack has opened a central London outlet that will function as a "delivery hub", having been deterred from opening a full restaurant due to high rents.

The new hub opened today near Monument tube station in the City of London and is aimed at workers in London's Square Mile.

Clockjack also has plans to open a second restaurant in Woolwich on Powis Street, which the company hopes will benefit from the ‘Crossrail effect'.

Orders from the City delivery hub can be placed either with Deliveroo or Clockjack's own website and delivered to homes and offices within a two-mile radius in under 30 minutes.

It will open from 11am until 10pm Mondays to Fridays with a different menu, still based on rotisserie chicken, with dishes starting from £3.95. Unlike a takeaway, it won't be possible to collect food from the site in person.

As well as the Square Mile, the delivery kitchen also covers Clerkenwell, Bethnal Green, Whitechapel and Wapping.

Meanwhile, the Woolwich restaurant will have 75 covers and will launch in July.

Clockjack was founded by Jerry Goldberg, former chief operating officer of Center Parcs Europe, and Fraser Duncan, a former managing director at private equity firm Terra Firma.

Their original site is a 50-cover restaurant in Denman Street in Soho, which opened in 2012.

Goldberg and Duncan plan more delivery-only kitchens throughout London and across the UK.

Goldberg said: "We didn't want to open a restaurant in the Square Mile because of the high property prices and we had heard that Deliveroo was making a huge amount of deliveries to corporate customers in the City. We thought we would follow that trend and enter the market with a delivery-only service for the City.

"The downside of delivery from restaurants is that restaurants are not designed to service delivery. Delivery demand tends to be at the same time as in-restaurant demand, so often the kitchens cannot cope with the extra demand from delivery. Other factors such as packaging, labelling, collection points and so on can all interfere with the core restaurant operation. There is also a cultural point - restaurants tend to prioritise the customers they can see."

And he predicted that players like Deliveroo would shake up the restaurant market, prompting restaurant operators to evolve and adapt. Previously, restaurant businesses wishing to offer a delivery service would have to invest in their own transport service but they can now take advantage of third party delivery businesses. "To date, the attention has been on the delivery providers. The big change is still to come - how restaurants adapt," he said.

"Delivery is the restaurant sector's ‘disruptive technology', changing the way people consume prepared meals. Deliveroo's rapid growth has demonstrated a huge customer appetite for quality, branded restaurant food delivery, but restaurants have failed to keep up with this fundamental consumer-led change.

"Clockjack is at the leading edge of the restaurant sector's response - a restaurant-branded kitchen dedicated to delivery only with no front-of-house operation."

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