Sat 28th Jun 2014 - Breaking News - Chilango burrito bond raises £1,000,000 Chilango burrito bond raises £1,000,000: The Chilango mini-bond, paying 8% interest, has reached it target with £1,005,500 raised from 293 investors through crowdfunding website Crowdcube. The largest single investment was £50,000. The offer has another 42 days left to run – and is open to investment of as much as £3,000,000, which would allow six sites to be opened. Chilango was founded by Dan Houghton and Eric Partaker in 2007 with an opening in Islington. It operates seven sites in London and has three openings lined up for this year – in Brewer Street, Soho, Camden High Street and an unnamed site where it has had an offer accepted. The company states in its prospectus: “We started Chilango because we wanted Londoners to be able enjoy the same incredible Mexican food we love so much. With seven established restaurants we’re delighted to see thousands of people enjoying Chilango’s vibrant flavours each and every week. But we also know that London is a massive city and that there’s more growth ahead. We’ve spent a lot of time thinking about our future, pulling together all the lessons we’ve learnt in opening our restaurants over the last seven years, along with the invaluable advice of our experienced advisors. Now we’re ready to take things up a gear. Our newest restaurant at Monument just opened in May 2014 and our plan is to open three additional restaurants in London this year with many more to come in the years ahead. Two of these restaurants are already secured and in development, while a third is in advanced legals. Each new restaurant requires around £500,000 to cover the upfront capital expenditure as well as the pre-opening costs. The Burrito Bond will help us open this next batch of sites.” The company reported that turnover rose 54% from £3.2m in the 52 weeks to 24 March 2013 to £5m in the most recent year to 29 March 2014 when administrative expenses fell from 15.2% to 12.2% of turnover. In 2013, the company became Ebitda positive, with Ebitda of £110,708, a £600,000 plus rise in Ebitda from the 52 weeks to 25 October 2011 when it was minus £531,510. Industry investors include Krispy Kreme UK chief executive Mike Dowell, Carluccio’s chief executive Simon Kossoff, and Whyte and Brown chairman Kevin Bacon. One would-be investor asked, via the Crowdcube forum, about why the company had closed sites at Meadowhall and Bluewater, which had caused turnover to drop in the year to 23 October 2012. A spokesman for Chilango said: “We found that visitors to the restaurants weren’t consistent throughout the week or weekend which made it difficult to manage them profitably. The lessons we learned from that – although painful – have been invaluable and led to us forming our advisory team and developing a much more refined property selection strategy.”