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Hospitality monolith Minor International wants to expand its new toy, Corbin and King — by building restaurant projects for which its now-ousted co-founders laid the foundations. The group’s chief executive, Dillip Rajakarier, said that plans for new restaurants — including a second Wolseley, on the ground floor of the former House of Fraser building in the City, which has been in the offing since 2019 — would continue.
This might be a turn-up for co-founder of the group Jeremy King — bought out last week by Minor. He said as long ago as November 2021 that it was Minor’s reticence over the state of the London restaurant market, into which he wished to launch those new openings, that formed part of their strategic dispute. Now, Rajakarier says that the new Wolseley will be joined by Manzi’s, the long-planned Soho seafood palace, and an as-yet unnamed third restaurant in Notting Hill:
“There’s a short term, medium term, and long term plan ... The medium term is fulfilling our obligations in terms of Manzi’s and the other two.”
Rajakerier said the long term included global expansion: one aim on which it actually aligned with Corbin and King, if not in terms of scale. In October, managing director Zuleika Fennell told a conference that it wanted to be in “every major capital city in the world.”
More soon.
