Giraffe World Kitchen

Giraffe World Kitchen is a restaurant chain headquartered in Birmingham, United Kingdom, which was founded in 1998 in Hampstead as Giraffe Restaurants, by Juliette Joffe, Russel Joffe, and Andrew Jacobs.[2] Giraffe was owned by its founders, with additional financial backing from private shareholders, 3i investment group and chairman Luke Johnson.

In October 2006, 3i invested £10 million in the company in a deal that valued the chain at £24 million.[3] In March 2013, the chain was announced to be acquired by Tesco for £48.6 million.[4] As part of the acquisition, 3i and Risk Capital Partners sold their shares in the company.[5] In June 2016, Tesco reached an agreement to sell the company to Boparan Holdings.[6]

Branches

As of August 2022, the company has 12 outlets across the UK plus three at Dubai Airport in the United Arab Emirates and two at Malaga Airport in Spain.[1]

In September 2016, the company introduced a new brand, Giraffe World Kitchen, with its first branch in Basingstoke. The brand then had 45 restaurants in the UK and four in the United Arab Emirates.[7] In March 2019, though, Boparan announced that 20 branches had been tagged for closure “to protect the company”, which had made a pretax loss of £10 million on sales of £67 million.[8]

External links