Hummus Bros

Idea

Introduction

We currently operate 4 high street locations and 50 popups a month in canteens of large offices such as Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan or Morgan Stanley.

We serve healthy & tasty Mediterranean food including hummus bowls topped with mouthwatering toppings such as beef stew, sauteed chicken, guacamole or falafel and accompanied by pitta bread. We also serve home made soups, quinoa-based dishes, salads and desserts.

We intend to expand further by opening more high street locations, operate more canteens and sell our preservative-free hummus in supermarkets. To do this we would use High Pressure Processing (HPP) technology which extends the shelf life of the product without changing our award winning recipe. We found that there is virtually no hummus brand in supermarkets, only the supermarkets' own label. We believe that we could capture a significant share of this £100m market and grow it by offering our better quality hummus.

Intended impact

Over the past few years we have observed the popularity of Mediterranean food and hummus in particular increase significantly. We have been making our food available by first opening high street restaurants and more recently directly in canteens of large offices around London. We are now looking to make our hummus available in supermarkets.

Our menu offers healthy options including ones for vegans and vegetarians as well as for our customers that have food intolerances to gluten, lactose or nuts.

We are hoping to make our wholesome, freshly-made, preservative-free food available more widely so that more people can adopt a healthy diet.

Substantial accomplishments to date

Over the past 10 years we have had a number of accomplishments.

We have opened 4 high street locations and operated 350 popups in corporate restaurants in 2014. We are looking to double that number in 2015.

We have been named one of Time Out's Top 50 restaurants in London as well as regularly featured in their Top Cheap Eats. Hummus Bros has been featured in a number of publications such as the Evening Standard, The Drum, The Telegraph, The Financial Times, etc (our press coverage is available at www.hbros.co.uk/press).

In 2014 we released our first cook book packed with 60 of our best recipes.

We have also recently launched our pre-ordering mobile app for iOS and Android as well as a retail range of Mediterranean products in our stores.

We have also been developing new products such as wraps, soups, Shakshuka and quinoa.

Monetisation strategy

We currently turn over £2m* from our four restaurant locations, popups in corporate restaurants and deliveries to offices around London. These all operate predominately on week days at lunchtime.

We are looking to continue innovating with new products and how these are delivered to our customers to increase the revenue from all our current channels.

We are hoping to increase our turnover over the next 12 months by opening 3 more high street locations and doubling the number of popups that we operate.

*Source: unaudited management accounts

Use of proceeds

We have opened 4 branches over the past 10 years which have cost as low as £75k to acquire and refurbish per location (depending on the size of the unit and the rent).

We'd expect to use up to £200,000 of the proceeds to open 2 more branches. The remainder would be used to expand the capacity of our central kitchen (£25,000) and some working capital (£25,000).

The maximum we will seek is £500,000 in which case we will open 4 more branches (£400,000), expand the capacity of our central kitchen (£25,000) and launch a range of supermarket products (£25,000). The remainder will be used as working capital (£50,000).