Administrator – Boparan paid £8.75m for 33 Ed’s Easy Diner sites: A report by administrators have revealed Giraffe, owned by Boparan Restaurants Holdings, paid £8.75m to buy 33 Ed’s Easy Diner sites out of administration – with 27 sites shutting immediately. A report filed at Companies House revealed Ed’s Easy Diner needed an injection of £2m to £3m in working capital. The company had lost £6m between October 2015 and August 2016, according to management accounts. A report stated: “The group had rapidly expanded over the past 18 to 24 months, with approximately 20 diners opening over this period. The majority of these newly opened diners did not perform as expected, and this, coupled with declining like-for-like sales in the existing diner portfolio, led to cash flow pressure on the group. The diner expansion programme had been predominantly funded by external bank debt and the declining performance of the group caused it to breach bank covenants. By the early part of October, the group was facing considerable cash flows pressures and continuing to trade, including taking credit from suppliers for necessary goods, was becoming problematic with two major suppliers requesting payment in advance in order to continue to deliveries.” Three other offers were received for the company aside from the Boparan offer. There was an offer to inject £2m in equity along with a proposal that Natwest, which had loans to the company worth £21.9m at the time of the appointment of the administrator, write-off circa £10m in debt. A second offer involved an equity injection of £2m along with the bank writing off £13m in debt. A third pre-pack offer included an injection of £5m and a roll of existing bank debt of £5m into a new structure. A further three offers were received to purchase NatWest’s debt. The report revealed non-disclosure agreements were signed by 42 parties and meetings were held with 22 separate parties. Administrators state surveyors Sanderson valued the company’s lease premium value at just £400,000 and the realisable value of its fixtures and fittings plus equipment at £3.3m. The report stated: “The sale consideration received from the purchaser of £8.75m is significantly in excess of the valuations received.” The report on Ed’s Easy Dining Group filed at Companies House suggested creditors will be left £27,915,383 out-of-pocket in the wake of the company’s administration.
Wahaca reopens all restaurants: Wahaca has reopened all it restaurants after customers were affected by an outbreak of norovirus. A statement by co-founders Thomasina Miers and Mark Selby said: “We are very pleased that we are now in a position to reopen the remaining few restaurants that were affected by last week’s suspected outbreak of norovirus. As of today (Wednesday, 9 November), all London sites are open and trading as normal. We are however continuing to monitor the situation very carefully and, as ever, will take any precautionary measure that we deem necessary in order to keep our customers and team members safe and well. We have been able to deal with this unfortunate situation in no small part due to the outstanding and unwavering support of our customers and our team members. We have also had the full co-operation of our suppliers, who continue to work with us and local and government authorities, to establish the source of the suspected outbreak. It appears that this has been an isolated incident and we are in touch with those who have reported that they’ve been affected. We very much hope that those who were affected are making a speedy recovery.”
