Itsu sees ‘solid’ growth in 2024 as it reports record full-year revenue of £161m, extends banking facilities to support expansion: Itsu, the healthy Asian food brand, has seen “solid” growth in 2024 as it reported group turnover increased to a record £161m for the year ending 31 December 2023 (2022: £101.2m) “with healthy sales growth across both restaurant and grocery businesses”. Group Ebitda was up 24% to £8.1m compared with last year, “despite rising costs and ongoing investment in people, healthier innovation and future growth”. Restaurant sales in 2023 grew to £116m. More than a quarter of the estate broke individual sales records, including Aldgate, St Mary Axe, The Strand and Piccadilly in Central London, Gatwick and Heathrow airports and suburban locations such as Wimbledon in south west London. Itsu’s grocery business delivered double-digit sales growth for its tenth consecutive year. A further 27 new products launched across chilled, ambient and frozen categories throughout the year. In July 2024, Itsu completed an upsizing of existing cash facilities to £30m with baking partner HSBC, “setting the business up to deliver ambitious growth plans”. Chief financial officer Greg Thorp said: “2023 delivered double-digit sales growth for the Itsu group with record results across multiple categories, channels and territories. Itsu [grocery] revenue exceeded £50m for the first time, with sales up 24% versus 2022. Meanwhile like-for-like restaurant sales were up 18% in the City of London as workers re-established office routines. Holding back on price increases and investing in building transactions through menu bundles and in-app promotions was key to healthy sales growth.” The Itsu app is on track to hit 750,000 downloads by the end of 2024. In-app payments accounted for nearly 10% of transactions across restaurants last month. Neil Miller, chief customer officer of restaurants, recently confirmed that new health-centric brand partnerships are due to be announced this autumn. Itsu [grocery] continues to see solid year-on-year growth in core ranges, alongside strong first-half 2024 sales for new products. European sales were up 128% in 2023 and are set to double again in 2024. The latest product innovation goes live in food-to-go chillers this October, alongside the biggest marketing campaign in the company’s history across rail, tube, roadside and digital channels. Chief executive Julian Metcalfe said: “Never before have customers around the world so wanted, and needed, healthier convenient food at home, and when out and about. This autumn, we’re opening two sites in London’s Oxford Street – Itsu West One (opening Friday, 13 September) and Itsu Marble Arch. Over the last 12 months, we’ve also signed iconic sites in London’s Bishopsgate, Manchester’s Trafford Centre, Windsor, Amsterdam’s Schiphol airport and dozens more. The [grocery] dishes you’ll see in supermarket chillers this autumn are the result of decades of learning. Itsu has been innovating and evolving for 20 years; there’s so much more to do, we’re only just beginning.” In July, Itsu, which is understood to have 15 sites in its immediate pipeline, reiterated its ambition to double its existing 80-strong UK estate.

Itsu – getting lfl growth through transactions absolutely key for us, big opportunity to move dial on frequency: Greg Thorp, chief financial officer at Itsu, the healthy Asian food brand, has told Propel that the business is focusing on transaction growth and is keen to hold prices “very low”. He said: “We’ve had like-for-like sales growth this year. It is not as high as 2023, but soft comparatives with 2022 make that understandable. We don’t want to do that through price – we want to do that through customer growth, through transaction growth. What we are seeing through the middle of the year and now is transaction growth, where we’re actually holding price very low. For us, affordability is important. Getting like-for-like growth through transactions is absolutely key for us. The first half of the year has definitely been challenging. I’ve seen many other trading updates from some very big companies talk about transaction decline, so it’s encouraging for us to see we’re a little ahead of that, and we’re seeing some transaction growth coming through the summer and as we move into the autumn. But again, we’re going to take that line of not trying to pump it through price.” On trading in the City, Thorp said: “On the one hand, it doesn’t get back to pre-covid levels, but on the other, we’ve got shops in the City that are breaking sales records from pre-covid. We think we’ve got people who are coming in three to four days a week, rather than maybe two to three days a week from a year or so ago. That allows us to get sales numbers consistent with 2019, and in some cases, higher. But there are little pockets that haven’t recovered to pre-covid levels and maybe won’t.” Itsu chief customer officer Neil Miller told Propel the company did a big review at the end of last year of its app performance, with a new app launched in March. He said: “The frequency outside of the City, of our customers into our restaurants, is not as high as you’d expect because of our proposition. There’s a big opportunity to move the dial on frequency, and so the loyalty scheme became more generous. We had more rewards earlier on in the cycle to encourage that multi trip, and that’s really, really working for us, and there’s been a real movement now in terms of the frequency. We’re also marketing the app on our grocery range and integrating it into that grocery purchase. The kiosk category is also promoting the app, and that’s where we’re getting a lot of downloads. The app is now in almost three quarters of a million customers’ hands. We’ve also introduced scanning within the kiosk environment, and that’s working really well for us, particularly on the grab and go and snack side.”