A casual dining restaurant that has become a fixture on UK‘s high streets in the past decade or so has just changed hands.
South African company Famous Brands, which already owns the Wimpy chain, has acquired Gourmet Burger Kitchen (GBK) for £120 million.
It bought GBK from Yellowwoods, another South African-run firm that owns the British arm of the Nandos chicken restaurant chain.
Famous Brands said it planned to double GBK‘s estate in five years time by expanding the burger chain into South Africa as well as continuing to open new sites in across the UK.
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GBK n was founded in 2001 in Battersea, south London, by three New Zealanders. It has since grown to 75 branches in the UK, five in Ireland and one each in Greece, Dubai and Oman.
GBK is sometimes credited as pioneering the rise in upmarket burger dining on the UK high street and in 2010 Yellowwoods purchased the chain for £30 million.
Famous Brands already has 25 brands in its portfolio, including over 2600 restaurants in South Africa, wider Africa, the UK and the Middle East.
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