Urban Dining buys burger chain Tootsies

Urban Dining has bought its first restaurant brand - burger chain Tootsies - for £30.75m and more than one million new Urban Dining shares.

The company was set up last year by former PizzaExpress and Punch directors to buy up to three established restaurant brands that could be grown to 100 sites apiece.

It will fund the acquisition with the £2.6m it raised this year and a further £27.9m raised by placing 49 million new shares on the market.

Tootsies was set up in the early 1970s and acquired in 1999 by current managing director Andrew Bonnell.

It runs 23 full-service quality burger restaurants aimed at families in high streets and retail centres and has 11 other sites in the pipeline. Average spend is £12 a head.

Urban Dining rejoined the Alternative Investment Market on Tuesday after temporarily suspending its shares earlier this month.

The company also has a second buy lined up, widely rumoured to be the Ma Potter's chain of 12 chargrill restaurants and two coffee shops.