Native and Sarap backed by new £50m hospitality investment fund

Restaurant brands Native and Budgie Montoya’s Apoy and Sarap are among the first concepts to be backed by a new £50m hospitality investment fund.

Hestia Hospitality is led by Andrew Fishwick, previously of the Truscott Arms gastropub, and has the support of high-net-worth investors including Justin King, the former chief executive of Sainsbury’s (both pictured above).

The fund said in an announcement it was aiming to become the UK’s “leading hospitality group focused on premium and high-end experiences”, targeting revenues of more than £100m within three years.

It has secured an initial £50m to acquire premium, multi-site restaurant brands that it considers to have “significant growth potential”.

Hestia’s three initial transactions include Native, the acclaimed sustainability-focused restaurant founded by Ivan Tisdall-Downes and Imogen Davis.

Native, which closed its site at Brown’s in Mayfair last year, is to take over the Pensons restaurant site at the Netherwood Estate in Herefordshire in May.

Hestia’s website also lists its investments as including Montoya’s Filipino restaurant brands Sarap and Apoy, which currently trades from Market Halls Oxford Circus.

The fund has also taken a minority stake in premium coffee brand Bloom, which has listings in sporting arenas and on the high street and plans to expand into museums and the cultural sector.

Fishwick said: “This funding round is a resounding endorsement of our thesis that there has never been a better time to invest in our sector.

“There are exceptional businesses with outstanding entrepreneurs and management teams behind them that need the support to grow to their full potential.

“Hestia is designed to be the antithesis of private equity; it is designed to nurture and facilitate sustainable growth and development, while maintaining excellence and keeping the customer experience at the front and centre of everything we do.”

Hestia said its management and advisor team had opened and operated more than 100 sites within the hospitality and leisure sector and built businesses collectively worth more than £5b.

It includes chief financial officer Paul Helmsley, former group finance director of the Innovation Group; non-executive chair Simon Esner, former director at BaxterStorey; and non-executive director Steve Smith, who spent nearly three decades at Morgan Stanley.

Hestia’s special advisors include Richard Wassell, founder of twentyretail and former chair of the Restaurant Property Advisors Society.