Wrap It Up! is currently raising investment over the Crowdcube platform to build a new kitchen and increase its growth rate, which is accelerating already with the acquisition of London’s Mexican Adobo restaurant brand. The company already has 12 outlets across London, with plans to open 16 new outlets elsewhere in the UK, over the next three years.
Adobo owned three London restaurants in Holborn, Green Park and Victoria on the back of a surge in popularity for Mexican food in the US. All three Adobo restaurants will now be incorporated into the Wrap It Up! chain. Craig Fraser, co-founder of Adobo, will be joining the Wrap It Up team, helping to facilitate the roll-out of the chain’s new centralised kitchen in Stratford. Due to be completed later in the year, it is expected that this new kitchen will be able to support up to 100 sites, with the creation of around 500 jobs.
This latest buy-out is based on an already tried-and-tested model which proved to be exceptionally successful for the brand which makes internationally-inspired wraps and fresh salads to order. In 2013, it bought The Flying Burrito chain, which also had three London outlets.
Wrap It Up! opens in Manchester
Wrap It Up! is opening a new outlet in Manchester at 103 Deansgate at the beginning of April, and expects it to be serving around 300 customers per day.
Wrap It Up! Managing Director, Tayub Mushtaq said: “Manchester has the right demographics for our business – a sizeable professional working population, students, and with our city centre location, plenty of passing trade”.
Bumper year in 2014
At the same time as McDonalds reported a 4.6 percent decline in sales for the first time in 12 years, takeaway wraps chain Wrap It Up! revealed it had achieved a 32 percent sales growth, returning profits of £253,766 in 2014.
Fast casual food it seems has well and truly taken hold in the UK. Already a well-established trend in the US, it points to a shift which has taken place in consumer tastes and demand.
This shift, along with increased competition, has led to a battle between traditional fast food and modern fast casual takeaways. Without doubt, consumers are more knowledgeable about the links between food and health, which puts pressure on all outlets to be as transparent about their ingredients as possible.
“Our customers want quality food, good variety and regular changes to the menu, which traditional fast food restaurants have historically found difficult to maintain”, explains Wrap It Up! managing director, Tayub Mushtaq.
“We’ve noticed a specific increase in demand for speciality food products and global flavours. Now, due to our flexibility, our menus are driven in part by customer suggestions and emerging tastes. Two years ago, meat and cheese combinations such as Mexican Burrito and Jamaican Jerk wraps were very popular.
“Now, however, we’re finding that customers are increasingly choosing our healthier options and our Lebanese Falafel seems to be the wrap of choice at the moment. People want to know what they are eating, and respond to transparency about the nutritional value of their food and the sources of the ingredients”.
Find out more about Wrap It Up’s investment plans here
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