Impresario Handmade Restaurants, which is backed by private equity firm L.Catterton, will be investing ₹100 crore for future expansion. The company, which has completed 20 years since inception, will be betting big on non-metro cities with a strong focus on growing the footprint of its brands Social and Smoke House Deli.

Riyaaz Amlani, CEO & MD, Impresario Handmade Restaurants told BusinessLine, “So far we have been very focused on the top 8-9 cities in the country. Over the next decade, we will look at growing our footprint beyond the metro cities. Consumers in these cities have high disposable income and aspire for the same lifestyle as in the metros. So, we are quiet bullish on the non-metro story of India. We are aiming to increase our total restaurant count from 61 to 140 in the next five years.”

“We have earmarked about ₹100 crore for future expansion. We are already generating substantial profits and we aim to plow it back to fuel this growth,” he added.

Increasing outlets

The company is known for its umbrella of restaurant brands including SOCIAL, Mocha, Smoke House Deli, Salt Water Cafe, Slink & Bardot and Souffle among others. “ The key drivers of growth for our business going forward will be our brands, SOCIAL and Smoke House Deli. Currently, we have 33 social outlets and we plan to increase this to 100 outlets in the next five years. So, we are looking at adding 12-15 new outlets of SOCIAL every year and about 2-3 new outlets of Smoke House Deli,” he added.

The restaurant industry which was hit hard during the past two years due to the pandemic has been witnessing a strong recovery in recent times. “ From February onwards, the business is growing from strength to strength. We are doing better than pre-Covid levels at the store level consistently. In the last two quarters, the restaurant industry has charted a strong recovery. We have a very strong outlook for the second half of the year as we expect inflationary pressures to begin easing,” Amlani added.

The restaurant company expects to close FY23 with revenues of ₹600 crore garnering a growth of about 35 per cent over FY22. “ Both dine-in and deliveries segments will continue to be important streams of revenues,” he added.

Asked if the company will look at going for an IPO, Amlani said, “It is too early to comment. That is definitely our ambition but it’s not something we are looking at immediately.”

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