MeatLiquor to open restaurant in Bloomsbury’s Brunswick Centre

MeatLiquor co-founder and managing director Scott Collins has said he is “delighted” to be opening a new restaurant in the Brunswick Centre in London’s Bloomsbury at the end of the month.

The opening ensures the group can retain the team from its King’s Cross site (pictured), which closed last week.

The King's Cross restaurant closed for good after three years of operation when it shut its doors at 10pm last Wednesday ahead of England's second lockdown.

The new venue, a former Las Iguanas, which has around 110 covers indoors and a further 110 covers outdoors, is due to open for takeaway and delivery in the last week of November ahead of restrictions lifting on 2 December.

Collins told The Caterer the landlord of the King’s Cross restaurant offered to buy them out because he wanted to sell the property. “It was the site that I had the biggest concern for out of 11,” he said.

In the meantime, he came into contact with the owner of the Brunswick Centre, Lazari Investments, and a “fantastic deal” was struck for what he described as “a brilliant site”.

“We didn’t lose anyone when we shut King’s Cross because we knew this was happening,” Collins said.

“This is a wonderful rainbow over the shitshow of 2020. We’re pretty solid. We’ve knuckled down – we’ve tweaked recipes, we’ve tweaked operations. We’ve just taken the time to have a breather and look at everything and it’s paid dividends hugely for the last three months. We’re in very, very good shape.”

Meanwhile, Collins hopes the industry gets more support dealing with landlords and rents to help businesses during the coronavirus crisis.

“We’re lucky to have a couple of great landlords,” he said. “It isn’t the landlords’ fault as we all know. But there has been no meditation from the government at all on it. We’ve been left to our own devices, which I don’t think has helped anyone.”

The group has eight other sites in London, as well as in Leeds and Brighton. Meatailer, the parent company of burger brand MeatLiquor, reported a spike in profits following a shake-up of the business two years ago with pre-tax profit of £265,000 for the year ended 30 June 2019.