Food and beverage company Lite Bite Foods Pvt. Ltd has acquired four restaurant brands from a hospitality arm of listed developer The Phoenix Mills Ltd.
The four brands are Shizusan, 212 All Good, 212 All Day and Bar Bar. The acquisition from Bellona Hospitality Services Ltd includes six running outlets of these brands at Phoenix Mills' malls in Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru.
“The acquisition is in line with our growth plans for 2019 and further diversifies our existing portfolio with a wide range of food and beverage offerings across the country,” Rohit Aggarwal, director of Gurugram-based Lite Bite Foods, told VCCircle.
“We are gearing up to further scale up the operations of these acquired brands,” he added.
The value of the deal has not been disclosed. Email queries sent to The Phoenix Mills did not elicit an immediate response.
Aggarwal and Dabur India Ltd vice-chairman Amit Burman are the promoters of Lite Bite Foods. Amit Burman-owned Gyan Enterprises holds majority stake in the company.
Bellona Hospitality Services Ltd is a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Phoenix Mills Ltd.
The developer had forayed into standalone restaurants and bars in 2014 to leverage the space at its malls.
Bellona had seven food and beverage brands across four of Phoenix’s malls in Mumbai, Pune and Bengaluru, according to its 2016-17 annual report.
The brands included Shizusan, Bar Bar, 212 All Day, 212 All Good, 212 Junior and 212 Fresh.
Bellona Hospitality’s turnover stood at Rs 29.44 crore in the year through March 2018, up from Rs 20.57 crore in the previous year. Its net loss widened to Rs 15.4 crore from Rs 13.65 crore during the same period.
Phoenix Mills currently has eight operational malls across Mumbai, Chennai, Pune, Bengaluru, Lucknow and Bareilly. It has five other malls under development.
In January, Kushagra Nagrath, former senior vice-president-food and beverages at Phoenix Mills, had joined Lite Bite Foods.
Lite Bite Foods, which commenced operations in 2002, has 23 owned and nine managed brands under its umbrella, according to its website. Its restaurant brands include Punjab Grill, Zambar, Fresc Co and Asia 7. It operates in 19 cities with 218 operational outlets.
Lite Bite Foods clocked consolidated net sales of Rs 233.7 crore in the year through March 2017, up from Rs 165.2 crore in the previous year. The company’s net losses widened to Rs 79.8 crore from Rs 22.7 crore, according to VCCEdge, the data research platform of VCCircle.
In a recent deal in the segment, Everstone Capital-controlled Pan India Food Solutions Pvt. Ltd had sold casual dining brand Bombay Blue to Yellow Tie Hospitality Management LLP, a food and beverage franchise management company, for an undisclosed sum in January.
