AN entrepreneur is eyeing further expansion of his latest restaurant group in Scotland, once investors start feeling more confident about consumer- facing businesses.
Neil Gatt previously founded the Spanish tapas La Tasca brand before selling it for £28.2 million to Penta Capital.
He spent around £1m and created 40 jobs when he opened the Pesto Italian restaurant in Glasgow in September last year.
That added to two restaurants in Manchester and one in Liverpool, with the roll-out funded from his own pocket.
However, he is keen for more and said: "The original plan was to try to attract private equity investment but obviously it is not a good time to do that at the moment.
"The private equity houses are not really looking to invest in consumer-facing businesses in the discretionary spend marketplace at the moment.
"So it is not a good time to raise roll out funds. Hopefully, that will improve and we will be looking at other locations in Scotland.
"There is plenty of opportunity for us to put Pesto into different parts of the country. Edinburgh is the obvious one but there's also the likes of Braehead and Livingston."
The 300-cover restaurant has been seeing steady growth with bookings peaking on Fridays and Saturdays.
"I think all cities outside of London are having problems attracting customers outside of those days. Around 90% of our lunch customers take our fixed-price offer and our Saturdays here have really picked up a lot recently.
"The best way to deal with costs is to increase your sales. If you just focus on your costs then you can almost end up with no sales. If you grow the sales line, the costs will look after themselves.
"In a new business like this one you need to make sure when people do come in they get the best service and the best food, so they tell people and come back.
"We are starting to see regular customers through the door, but it has been a challenging start.
"However, it is growing steadily week on week and as long as that continues I'm happy."
Mr Gatt had initially hoped to open the first outlet in Glasgow after experiencing success in the city with La Tasca but was thwarted on acquiring premises.
Even after securing the site on St Vincent Street there was an 18-month wait during which time competitors such as Jamie's Italian, Prezzo, Carluccio's and Browns all opened nearby.
He said: "Glasgow was supposed to be the first Pesto. We had a property we liked on Renfield Street but we got beaten and Zizzi went in there.
"Then we looked at some others and failed to acquire them for various reasons.
"In the intervening time we opened up three more. I had always traded very well here with my previous business so I was keen to get back."
Mr Gatt is also planning to expand the Pesto in a pub concept, after a successful trial in a country location in Cheshire.
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