The owner of restaurant chains Frankie & Benny's and Garfunkel's expects to open up to 50 new outlets this year after posting record annual profits.
The Restaurant Group, which operates over 470 restaurants and pubs, said pre-tax profits lifted 7.4% to £78.1 million in the year to December 28 after opening 40 new restaurants and creating 1,300 jobs.
The business, which also includes Chiquito and Coast to Coast, grew sales 10% to £635 million as it added a new chicken section at its Frankie & Benny's outlets.
It said that the new year had started well, with like-for-like sales up 2.5% in the eight weeks to February 22.
The firm is upbeat about prospects for this year as wages have outstripped for inflation for the first time in a number of years, giving consumers more disposable income.
The FTSE 250 group added that with around half of its sites in leisure parks it stands to benefit from a much stronger cinema film release schedule than has been the case in the last two years.
Some of the films slated for UK cinema release over the next two years include Jurassic World, The Hunger Games: Mockingjay - Part 2 and Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.
Chief executive Danny Breithaupt took over last September following the retirement of former boss Andrew Page.
Mr Breithaupt said: "We have continued the acceleration of our opening programme with 40 great new restaurants and pubs opened in the year, and a further increase expected in 2015."
Edison Investment Research analyst Sohil Chotai said: "With an improving consumer backdrop of wage growth, increasing disposable incomes and benign inflation it is positive to see that Restaurant Group's strong performance has continued into this year."
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article