French Restaurant Chain Café Rouge Will Launch a Delivery-Only Brand Next Month

The French restaurant chain, Café Rouge, will move into casual dining delivery via a Deliveroo-provided service called Stack and Grill. Focusing on burgers, croques monsieur grilled cheese open sandwiches and craft beer, the sub-brand will go live in the next few weeks, as reported by Big Hospitality.

Owned by Casual Dining Group (CDG), the brand’s prior reluctance to enter into the delivery market centred on concerns about the portability and quality of its signature dishes. As CDG chief operating officer James Spragg said, “One of the things that we struggle with is that a boeuf bourgignon (beef stew) and confit de canard (duck confit) doesn’t travel well.” The counterpoint is that croques, burgers and beer are less affected by delivery, and offer an opportunity to tap into an evening market that is currently a quieter period at the brand’s bricks-and-mortar sites.

The service will spread beyond the capital to be available from over 80 kitchens, with 16 sites in London and its suburbs. CDG’s move follows a more successful delivery roll-out with Italian brand Bella Italia, whose menu is more suited to being delivered. The long-term goal is to roll out Stack and Grill to entirely subsume Café Rouge’s current delivery operation, countering the problems that inspired its creation.

Delivery from restaurants is a well-documented growth area, with Deliveroo the biggest player in an increasingly competitive sector. The two latest high-profile operators to have entered the market — Andrew Wong’s new Bloomberg site and Kricket’s Deliveroo Editions brand Namma — are both funded by Chris Miller’s White Rabbit Fund, who recognises new opportunities for growth within delivery.

• Casual Dining Group to launch delivery brand out of Cafe Rouge kitchens [Big Hospitality]
• Read all of Eater London’s Restaurant Delivery coverage [ELDN]