Restaurant franchise has international ambitions

Positive news during the pandemic:

Chaiiwala, a South Asian street-food restaurant franchise, intends to open 156 sites both nationally and internationally by 2023.

Currently the company has 32 sites across the UK, and employs 800 staff. Its expansion would lead to the creation of thousands of jobs.

40 locations are planned to open before the end of 2020.

This ambition is driven by the outstanding growth in takeaway demand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Finance director Nil Naik said: “As a South Asian street food provider with Western fusion, our food and drink offering resonates well with desi and ethnic demographic customers and our expansion plans centre around our aim to reach a wider audience.

“By opening bigger stores in new locations, we are confident that the brand will achieve a bigger reach and help more customers discover what we think is the best chaii in the UK. 

“Since the pandemic we have increased our delivery options across all third-party platforms such as Deliveroo, Uber Eats and Just Eat, and this has increased our takeaway sales by 10 per cent – with take out now accounting for more than 80 per cent of our sales.

“We could not have achieved this success without our franchise growth partners who live and breathe the brand.

“The first Chaiiwala locations will open in Canada in early 2021 and we have plans to expand in South Africa, Europe, and the Gulf.

“In total we have sold 189 locations in total and will open 52 stores per year over the next three years, employing an additional 1,200 people per year until 2023.”

Most restaurants still rely on employees to fill in handwritten timesheets stating their hours worked. Getting employees to retrospectively record their hours worked directly onto paper is not only open to fraud and mistakes, it also makes room for human error further up the chain, and it can be a massive drain on your office and payroll staff who have to approve and type up all the information.

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