Exclusive – Camile Thai puts UK restaurant operations into liquidation: Ireland’s leading Thai restaurant brand Camile Thai has failed in its attempts to expand into England and has placed its UK operations into liquidation, Propel has learned. Camile Thai was founded in 2011 by serial entrepreneur Brody Sweeney and operates 41 sites in Ireland, 35 of which are franchised. The UK arm of the business operates four sites – three in Northern Ireland and one in Clapham, south London. Chris Tate and Robert Young, of Azets, has been appointed voluntary liquidators of the UK arm, Camile Thai UK. The business owes £4,604,547, including more than £3.5m to its parent company Camile Thai Kitchen. In 2021, Sweeney announced plans to open seven new UK sites taking the total to 13, including restaurants in Barnes, Streatham and Twickenham in London. Those sites have since closed. According to its website, the company’s dark kitchen in London’s Canary Wharf and restaurant in Epsom, Surrey, are now closed. Accounts for the year ending 31 December 2021 showed Camile Thai UK had three company-owned restaurants, having sold some of its sites to franchisees during 2018, 2019 and 2020. It turned over £1,276,298 (2020: £1,790,525) with a pre-tax loss of £55,533 (2020: loss of £37,745). In the same period, the original Irish arm, Camile Thai Kitchen, reported revenue from its seven Irish managed sites increased 15% to more than €6.5m, while profits surged by a third to almost €574,000. Camile Thai Kitchen’s net assets rose by almost a quarter to about €3.1m, its accounts showed. The operating company had retained profits of €3.1m on its balance sheet. The overall Camile Thai group’s revenues was thought to be about €30m, including the sales of franchisees. At the time of Camile Thai Kitchen’s accounts being filed, in October 2022, Sweeney said he hoped to open a further 20 to 30 outlets in Ireland and the UK over the next two years. Of the performance of the business in 2022, Sweeney said: “Much more difficult than the previous two years. Huge increases in food, labour, packaging and energy costs, have not been helped by a slowdown in consumer spending as many of our hard-pressed customers struggle to make ends meet.” In 2021, Camile Thai opened a small number of test sites through virtual kitchens in the US, with partners Kitchen United. He said because of the impact of the war in Ukraine “and the material investment we would need to have continued to make, we have suspended the tests until the trading environment improves”. Sweeney, who previously founded O’Brien’s Irish Sandwich Bars, owns more than 90% of the group, with the rest shared by a number of private investors including technology investor Brian Caulfield and Manders Terrace, the company that owns Web Summit. It costs franchisees about €350,000 to open a Camile outlet. They pay a royalty of about 5% of sales to use the brand Sweeney markets and they also buy about 45% of their ingredients, such as sauces and spring rolls, from his company, which runs a production factory in Finglas. Camile Thai featured in the Propel UK Food and Beverage Franchisor Database, which this month celebrates its first anniversary since launching. In that time, it has doubled in size from an initial 100 companies to 200 in the latest edition, which was released today (Wednesday, 19 April). Companies can now have an unlimited number of people receive access to Propel Premium for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or a supplier. The single subscription rate is £495 plus VAT for operators and £595 plus VAT for suppliers. Email jo.charity@propelinfo.com to upgrade your subscription.