Honest Burgers to acquire 12 GBK sites

Honest Burgers is set to acquire 12 Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK) sites, expanding its restaurant portfolio to over 50 locations across the UK. 

The new venues will broaden the brand's footprint in London and transform its national reach, bringing the concept to new customers in the Midlands, the South East and East Anglia. 

A new era for Honest Burgers

With this, the group moves into the accelerated growth phase of its 2030 strategy, facilitated by funding from existing shareholders and a senior debt package provided by OakNorth. This will be used to invest in a new central prep kitchen, where Honest will prepare everything daily from scratch.

"Growing our footprint is a key priority for the brand, and the new investment and refinancing is a vote of confidence in the business following a fantastic commercial performance last financial year," says Matt Brandon, CEO of Honest Burgers. "We are delighted to add brand-new locations to our group and welcome a whole new team into Honest to share our passion for great quality burgers, fantastic hospitality and exceptional value for our customers." 

Thomas Kelly, chair of the Honest Burgers board, adds: "This acquisition is an important step in our strategic plan to quadruple the size of our business over the next five years. We're excited about the journey ahead and the opportunity this brings."

The former GBK outposts will be converted into Honest Burgers restaurants, offering the brand's signature menu, including the original Honest Burger, rosemary salted chips and the Smashed range. The teams at each new outpost will work closely with local partners, including local breweries.

Martin Owen, group people director at Boparan Restaurant Group (BRG), which owns and operates the GBK brand, comments: "This is a strategic opportunity for GBK, which allows us to focus our core growth area of delivery. Selecting who we sold the sites to was a vital part of this process. We needed to ensure that they had the right values and would do the right thing by our amazing colleagues."

James Dodd, group head of marketing at BRG, adds: "Over the last couple of years, we've seen really strong growth in our delivery business for GBK. This led us to trialling a partnership with a leading national delivery kitchen operator across multiple sites around the UK over the last 12 months. We are really happy with the results of that partnership, and we now plan to roll out across a further 100 locations. This will mean we are able to serve more of our guests in more locations than ever before."

The announcement follows a busy year for the brand, which included the launch of the first Honest Smash + Grab site on Liverpool Street at the end of 2024, and the successful introduction of the digital rewards app, Honest Insiders, in June. 

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