Meal Delivery Service Dishes Up Good Growth

Crain’s Manchester Business:

A Manchester-based firm that delivers restaurant meals to apartments in the city centre says it is defying the financial downturn and looking to franchise its business across the UK.

City Servants, based on Ducie Street, has been in business eight years and has 10 restaurants as clients.

Director Gregg Wall said a positive trading year — during which turnover reached around £500,000 — had led to the decision to expand.

“We want to start franchising the business out it in the next eight months,” he said.

“We feel it is a good model — we do around 250 orders a week at an average of £40 — and it is scalable enough to operate in between 20 and 30 cities around the country. We’ve not finalised how much it will cost franchisees yet, but we are looking at how we’ll market the business.” More.