Wolseley City launch sends Wolseley Group subsidiary sales past £10m
Strong sales at Wolseley City have pushed a subsidiary of the eponymous restaurant group’s sales past £10m for the first time, its latest accounts show.
The King William Street-based bar and restaurant, which opened in November 2023, helped turnover at the Wolseley Hospitality Group jump 85 per cent to £10.8m in 2024, alongside the launch of the Soho-based seafood restaurant Manzi’s, which opened in June 2023.
But a rise to the minimum wage combined with continued inflation and depressed consumer spending saw the group post another loss of £2.4m, down from £4.7m the previous year.
The group comprises the two new restaurants as well as Soutine, a Parisian cafe-restaurant in St John’s Wood. The trio of restaurants are a subsidiary of the wider Wolseley restaurant collection of 9 sites across central London including the Delaunay on the Strand and Brasserie Zedel in Piccadilly. The wider group is due to report its results in the coming weeks.
“The directors are grateful for the support of loyal guests and are proud of hard-working colleagues in what has been a positive trading year despite the backdrop of external challenges the business has faced from the cost of living crisis impacting discretionary consumer spend, inflation on the supply side, geopolitical uncertainty and increased national minimum wage impacting labour margins,” Wolseley Hospitality Group’s board said in a statement.
The restaurant group was set up in the 1980s by storied restaurateurs Chris Corbin and Jeremy King.
But the firm was plunged into administration during the Covid pandemic, with King ousted from the group after an auction to buy the firm out of administration was won by Minor International, a firm owned by Thai billionaire William Heinecke, who bid £60m for the group.
King has since gone on to launch his own restaurant group, which now includes the Arlington in St James’s, The Park in Queensway and a revival of Simpson’s in the Strand.
The Wolseley City has been shortlisted in the category of best breakfast at CityAM’s forthcoming Toast awards.