Hardcastle to Double Stores

Hardcastle Restaurants , a development licensee of American burger chain McDonald's Corp for the south and west of the country, will double its store count over the next two years as it pushes the pedal in a booming quick service restaurant market backed by increasing spends on eating out by Indians .

Mr. Amit Jatia, Vice President, Hardcastle Restaurants, said, “Having been around in India for 17 years, Hardcastle merged into a listed group company, Westlife Development, six months ago and may look to raise funds through a qualified institutional placement (QIP) or a follow on public offer (FPO) going ahead.” This aggressive rollout will parallel the moves by McDonald's biggest competitor Yum! Brands, which aims to open 1,000 stores and clock a billion-dollar revenue across its brands KFC, Pizza Hut and Taco Bell by 2015 in India.

Mr. Jatia further added, "The McDonald's India story can be broadly categorized as 'build, grow, accelerate' . The emphasis initially was more on building and making our backend robust, and then we focused on expanding our footprint by introducing different business models, menu and price innovations; but now, we are in a phase where we are looking at expanding stores in a big way and doubling the current base by financial year 2015."