By Jennifer Sieg
Four booming restaurants are set to depart KERB’s Seven Dials Market this month, leaving room for new and exciting talent to enter the up-and-coming hospitality industry.
Continuing to build their presence in and around the City of London, the four businesses — Truffle, Club Mexicana, El Pollote and Curry on Naanstop — will leave the market after advancing through the “KERB ecosystem” with growing success.
The London street food favourite behind Seven Dials Market, KERB, has a history of nurturing and accelerating businesses within the City’s up-and-coming hospitality sector.
The businesses located in Seven Dials Market are considered “KERB members,” which allows access to the group’s community and continuous support – oftentimes through an initial nine-week mentorship programme, inKERBator.
The four departing restaurants — which have generated a collective monthly revenue of over £465k — now have stores popping up in various areas of the City.
But the market won’t be missing out on the exciting buzz for long.
The spaces left behind will be taken over by four new independent restaurants: Lucky’s Hot Chicken, Los Gordos, Motherflipper and Kolkati.
KERB managing director, Ian Dodds, said: “The graduation of these four Seven Dials Market traders is an exciting, positive step for small businesses, as well as London’s hospitality industry.
“COVID taught the consumer to value independent businesses, and support them. Since the hospitality industry reopened, we’ve seen hunger from London’s landlords to also support these businesses.
“Now, having proven themselves at Seven Dials Market, small independents like Truffle and El Pollote are taking over sites previously operated by established national chains.”
Tom Bickers, founder of Truffle, which has generated over £3.6m in revenue from the market location alone, said the inKERBator programme, which he joined in 2018, was “integral” in the business’ success.
“It was a big leap of faith from KERB to put us on the programme, and cooking truffle burgers in their office in the cold January of 2018 was what started our business,” he added.
With Seven Dials Market being Truffle’s first permanent and every day site, it has since opened five branches across London.
Bickers considered the market to be the much needed “springboard” for his business to grow, mainly because of its central London location and “low start up costs”.
However, leaving the market is Truffle’s next step in achieving long-term success.
“Leaving will allow us to focus on our full service restaurants, innovate and develop our menus further and grow the business to its full potential. Innovation is the goal for 2024,” Bickers added.
