The Square Pie Bond is a very straightforward idea – you loan money to us and we agree to pay you interest semi-annually and redeem your initial investment (the ‘principal’) when the Bond(s) mature in 4 years. The Square Pie Bond will be issued by Square Pie Bonds PLC.
We have designed the Square Pie Bonds to be a simple investment. For an initial investment of £500 or more, Square Pie Bonds PLC will provide registered holders of Square Pie Bonds (“Bondholders”) with a fixed-rate return of 8% gross interest per annum over the course of an initial four year term payable in cash.
At the end of the initial four year term and on every anniversary thereafter, you have a choice: either continue to hold the Square Pie Bonds for another year on exactly the same terms or give us six months’ notice and we’ll redeem your Square Pie Bonds. On maturity of the Square Pie Bonds, the full amount of your initial investment will be repaid without any deductions or charges.
Please note: Square Pie Bonds are issued on a first come, first served basis.
Use of Funds
In simple terms we want to open more restaurants, grow our grocery business and invest where we need to, in order to ensure that as we grow we keep making pies as good as they have always been and let more people know how good they are.
Sounds nice and easy but of course it isn’t and we will be using the money raised not only to open restaurants but also to make sure we have the best people across the business to develop and run our business and the best equipment to make more pies to our quality. We also plan a bigger sales team and to invest more in marketing and PR to grow awareness across the country.
Each new restaurant costs us around £300k dependent on size and we plan on funding new sites 50:50 between debt finance on this bond and a previous £1 million equity raise as well as internally generated cash flow. We budget our restaurants to pay back their original investment in less than 3 years.
We feel that joint revenue stream of expensive to build restaurants but with long term leases and grocery / wholesale sales which require less start-up costs but are not guaranteed is a sensible way to grow.
Square Pie is a leading name for gourmet pies in the UK with a fast growing restaurant and grocery business. The business was set up by Martin Dewey after he got so frustrated at not being able to find a decent pie that decided to make his own. There are 6 Square Pie restaurants in London and we also supply the finest pies branded into supermarkets and other wholesale.
Martin & his wife Lucy still run the company with the help now of some fantastic people, including recently joined industry professional Nabil Subuh as CEO. In 2014 we served around 700,000 customers across our restaurants and wholesale and are on track to hit net sales of over £5 million for the financial year 2015 which ends on 4 January 2016.
We started on a market stall in Spitalfields Market in London and sold 7 pies on our first day. Soon the market stall couldn’t keep up so we opened a proper restaurant whose record is now 992 pies in a day. We’ve always been obsessed by quality and our chefs never cut corners with our food using only the finest natural ingredients and avoiding dodgy additives.
Our other restaurants are Westfield White City, the O2, Westfield Stratford, Excel Exhibition Centre, and Bluewater with the start of our push outside London happening in September with an opening at Birmingham Grand Central. We offer a range of 10 lovely varieties of award winning classic pie, all with a short crust pastry base and puff pastry top as well as skinny pies from only 350 kcal with less pastry and new on the scene mini canapies for snacking.
However, the restaurants are now much more than just pies – we do amazing steamed then baked jacket potatoes, other British classics done properly like sausage & mash and macaroni cheese with just added to our O2 menu British rotisserie chicken and salads.
Our restaurants sit in what’s called fast casual by the marketing people. We’re a pretty impatient lot and this means there’s no cooking to order or table service but great quality food without waiting, perfect and in a similar vein to the likes of Leon, ITSU and Tortilla. Last year our restaurant sales grew by a fantastic 16% on a like for like basis and over 50% in terms of operating profit generated. We now have developed a successful model to deliver fantastic food & service and want to open a further 5 restaurants across the UK next year with more to come.
Last year was a big year for us as we launched into supermarkets with our range of classic pies and mini pie canapie and both are now on Ocado.com and in around 80 London Tesco’s with more retailers to come. You can also enjoy our pies at Wimbledon Tennis, Twickenham RFU, and fantastic pubs like the Drafthouse amongst many other places. This side of the business hit run rate sales of £1m in its first proper year and we are aiming to double that this year.
Our canapies are simply proper pies just smaller. They are the leading branded mini pie in the UK and are going down a storm – we have very ambitious plans for the future for them.
You’ll also find us at the UK’s leading music festivals and we’ve been at every Glastonbury since 2002. This year we had 3 stalls there and made over 3.5 tons of fresh mash in the field. We’ll be at the Latitude Festival later this year so come and say hello if you’re going!
We’ve always liked talking about pies and realise we’re not alone so we try and have some fun with them and so far have made over 125 varieties since we started.
Our ethos has always remained the same, we want to make the best food, have great friendly service and atmosphere in our restaurants and enjoy what we’re doing without any stuffy corporate nonsense.