Mon 29th Sep 2025 - Exclusive: Honest Burgers acquires 12 Gourmet Burger Kitchen sites Exclusive – Honest Burgers acquires 12 Gourmet Burger Kitchen sites: Honest Burgers, the Active Partners-backed business, has acquired 12 Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK) sites from Boparan Restaurant Group (BRG), expanding its restaurant portfolio to over 50 locations. Propel understands that Honest Burgers paid circa £3.7m for the 12 sites, which strengthens the brand’s footprint in London and broadens its geographical reach into the Midlands, the south east and East Anglia. All 12 will be converted into Honest Burgers. The company said: “With this, Honest Burgers moves into the accelerated growth phase of its 2030 strategy and has been facilitated by an injection of new funding from existing shareholders and a senior debt package provided by OakNorth. This will also be used to invest in a new state-of-the-art central prep kitchen.” Matt Brandon, chief executive of Honest Burgers, said: “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. 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 Honest Burgers, said: “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 deal follows the launch of the first Honest “Smash + Grab” site in Liverpool Street at the end of 2024, and the introduction of Honest Insiders earlier this summer, the brand’s first digital rewards app with exclusive rewards for customers. Martin Owen, group people director of BRG, said: “This is a strategic opportunity for GBK which allows us to focus on 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. We thank our colleagues for their exceptional commitment and contribution to the brand.” James Dodd, group head of marketing for BRG, said: “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.” Honest Burgers currently operates 39 restaurants in England and Wales, including London, Brighton, Bristol, Cambridge, Cardiff, Liverpool, Manchester, Reading and Windsor. Honest Burgers features in the Propel Turnover & Profits Blue Book, which is available exclusively to Premium Club subscribers and features 1,163 companies. Honest Burgers’ turnover of £56,378,000 for the year to 28 January 2024 is the 228th highest in the database. A Premium Club subscription costs an annual sum of £495 plus VAT for operators and £595 plus VAT for suppliers. Companies can now have an unlimited number of people receive access to Premium Club for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or supplier. Email kai.kirkman@propelinfo.com today to sign up.