The restaurant and coffee shop chain City Grill this year has budgeted investments worth 3 million euros in real estate and 1 million euros in developing and furnishing three new restaurants that the company intends to open.
"Our goal for 2007 is to open at least three new restaurants. For this purpose, we will mainly target the market in Bucharest and intend to open coffee shops specifically in shopping centres and office buildings," said Dragos Petrescu, general manager of City Grill.
The company derived turnover worth 5.2 million euros last year, almost tripling in value against the figure reported in 2005 (1.8 million euros).
"The surge in turnover witnessed by City Grill was triggered by the fast expansion of our network of restaurants, which are opened directly by the company or as company franchises. However, we have found our restaurants do not reach maturity immediately after their opening, but within six months, which leads to a significant growth in turnover every month," says Petrescu.
The company opened six new restaurants over the 2005 - 2006 period, two of which are franchises while the other four have been opened directly by the company. The franchises alone accounted for 1.25 million euros of the turnover secured in 2006, which is close to the value of the total turnover reported in 2005.
"The growth pace we saw in 2005 has exceeded our expectations, we originally planned to open just two new restaurants and we actually opened six," said the general manager of City Grill.
The company Trotter Prim, which owns the restaurant chain City Grill, also controls the restaurant Caru' cu Bere. The turnover created by this restaurant, which has been opened since last October, has not yet been included in the calculated turnover. Dragos Petrescu expects the restaurant Caru' cu Bere will account for some 20% of the turnover
