Popular restaurant chain Wagamama has shared plans to open up to 10 new restaurants around the UK in a move which it said will create 500 jobs.
The pan-Asian restaurant chain opened its first new site of the year in Bentley Bridge in Wolverhampton at the end of January and has now shared that its demand from consumers was growing.
Wagamama is known for casual dining on bench seating and has more than 170 restaurants across the UK after first launching in London 32 years ago.
Wagamama to open 10 new restaurants in the UK
The brand is set to open sites this year in locations including St Enoch’s in Glasgow, Epsom, Doncaster, Chatham in Kent and Watford.
Wagamama's openings will create about 500 jobs including kitchen porters, waiters, chefs and general managers.
Chief executive Thomas Heier said 2023 had been an “exciting year” with the launch of new dishes on a Korean-inspired menu including vegan corn dogs, or K-dogs, and hot pots and rice bowls.
Discussing the openings, Mr Heier said: "Our teams have done an excellent job in continuing to elevate our guest experience and we very much look forward to welcoming more guests to our benches as we head into 2024."
Sales at Wagamama restaurants jumped by more than a 10th in the half-year to August, on a like-for-like basis compared with the same period the year before.
Wagamama’s owner The Restaurant Group (TRG) was bought by US private equity giant Apollo which agreed to buy the business for £701 million, including debts, in October.
It sparked a takeover battle for TRG, which also owns the Brunning and Price pub group, with Pizza Express owner Wheel Topco also considering making a bid for the group.
But it pulled out of a potential offer because of “market conditions”.
TRG last year agreed to sell off its loss-making restaurant chains Frankie & Benny’s and Chiquto to Big Table Group – the owner of Bella Italia, Las Iguanas and Banana Tree.
TRG said it would pay £7.5 million in cash to Big Table for it to buy its struggling leisure division.
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 here