Restaurant woes as competition eats up custom

The pressure on the casual dining sector is beginning to bite harder with two Birmingham restaurants starting its restructuring plans.

One of Birmingham’s Strada restaurants is among 11 that are being closed across the country after the Italian restaurant chain said it had experienced rising costs.

Japanese restaurant Rofuto, based in the Park Regis hotel at Five Ways, has begun a consultation with its staff that is expected to lead to job cuts as it struggles to attract business during the week.

In a statement Park Regis said: “Inconsistency and fluctuation in trade at the start of the week makes planning difficult, so hotel managers are looking to change the way that the restaurant operates within the context of the whole business, and its dining and conferencing offer.”

Strada will shut its Mailbox site week, while its restaurant at the ICC will remain open. Strada will have 16 restaurants trading once it completes the round of closures of the sites which are “no longer viable”.

It said: “Where possible, we are converting the sites to new formats or selling them to other operators, but in some cases, recent increases in rents and rates, coupled with government-decreed rises in wage costs, make it very difficult to operate profitably a full service restaurant serving fresh food.”