Hawksmoor has been put up for sale as the British steakhouse chain seeks funds to expand overseas.
Bankers at Stephens, a United States-based advisory firm, are understood to have been hired to drum up interest in a business that has 11 locations in the UK and Ireland and a couple in America. An auction could attract bids of more than £100 million.
Hawksmoor was founded in east London by Will Beckett and Huw Gott in 2006, focused on serving high-quality, well-butchered beef. They are expected to retain their minority holdings in the event of a sale and would stay on to run its day-to-day operations, according to Propel, a hospitality sector newsletter. Since 2013 it has been 51 per cent-owned by Graphite Capital, the London-based investment house that also has backed Wagamama and Corbin & King.
“We’ve got a great relationship with Graphite and together we are getting to know the US investment community in more depth,” Beckett, 47, the chief executive, said. “As that continues, an opportunity may emerge that we wish to explore together.”
Beckett launched Hawksmoor almost 20 years ago with Gott, 46, after the success of The Redchurch cocktail bar in Shoreditch. They have since opened ten Hawksmoor restaurants in Britain, seven of which are in London, one in Dublin and another in New York. A Chicago branch opened last week in the building that hosted basketball star Michael Jordan’s eponymous sports bar in the 1990s.
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The chain has been looking for new investment to fund further expansion in the US. In February Beckett said the new investor would need to have experience of the American market and could bring “energy” and “contacts” as well as cash to the table.
In the past he has said that the brand wants to open a few restaurants a year from 2025 onwards and was likely to focus on the US, where it has received critical acclaim. A review of the Manhattan branch in The New York Times was published under the headline: “Does New York Need a British Steakhouse? Yes, if it’s Hawksmoor.”
Graphite Capital, which first invested in Hawksmoor when the business was valued at £35 million, said it did not comment on market rumour.
Hospitality businesses suffered a gruelling pandemic, followed by the twin blows of soaring food and labour costs and the cost of living crisis. More recently, a wave of takeover deals has included The Restaurant Group, owner of the Wagamama chain, being sold to Apollo, the private equity investor, for £506 million and the $621 million sale of Snowfox, the Yo! Sushi owner, to Zensho, of Japan.
