Yahoo News Plymouth restaurant closes after firm makes £14m loss
A Plymouth restaurant closed after its parent firm made a £14.5m loss. The Wildwood restaurant in Plymouth city centre shut in April along with 13 other outlets.
The hospitality chain Tasty Plc, which also runs the Dim t Asian food brand, shuttered the Derry’s Cross restaurant despite a 4.1% sales hike, because increased utility, food and labour costs hit the group. And the company, which also has a Wildwood restaurant at the Royal William Yard, warned it would continue to struggle this year, due to inflation and a negative impact on sales from events including the Euro 2024 football competition, the Olympics and the general elections.
The company’s newly published accounts reported an after-tax loss of £14.5m for 2023, up from a £6.4m loss in 2022. But the document, filed at Companies House, did say an uplift is expected towards the end of the year, with the new government in place and the group having reached “a period of stability” due to a restructuring plan, which shut restaurants and caused redundancies, but gave it the benefits of a “smaller, more profitable estate”.
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The Derry’s Cross Wildwood opened in about 2016 in a unit that was previously the La Tasca Spanish-style tapas bar, which closed in 2014 after the Casual Dining Group began to shut or sell off the restaurants. Wildwood opened at the listed Royal William Yard in 2017.
But Tasty ran into problems and in April revealed plans to shut a raft of sites as part of a major restructuring. The company said it would close loss-making restaurants after a “challenging” start to the year. It shut Wildwood restaurants in Plymouth, Bicester, Birmingham, Brentwood, Cambridge, Chichester, Edinburgh, Kettering, Kingston, Ludlow, Market Harborough, Skipton and Worcester, plus the Dim t restaurant in Loughton
Writing in Tasty’s new annual report, chairman Keith Lassan said the restaurant chain was hit by multiple problems. He said: “Footfall continued to be affected by the work from home culture post Covid, transportation strikes and bad weather occurring during important trading periods of the year, as well as the pressure on consumer spend as living costs continue to increase.
“Deliver and takeaway weakened during the year, without a corresponding move towards a dine-in experience. Performance at the start of 2024 was disappointing with year to date like-for-like sales only 0.2% positive.”
He added: “We regret we had to make the difficult decision to make redundancies… but we believe this action will protect the long-term security of the group and the remaining employees.”
He said the board had to take action to reshape the group’s estate and correct the trading decline and a projected earnings loss. Under the restructuring plan, restaurants were closed, site leases on surviving outlets were renegotiated and a £750,000 convertible loan, from Bet365 shareholder Will Roseff, was injected into the group. But Mr Lassan said the board believes its decisions have “placed the group on a firm footing to enable growth.”
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