‘Failure of business model’ led to closure of Camile Thai restaurants in UK, says founder

Businessman Brody Sweeney, the founder of the Camile Thai takeaway brand, has said he hopes to return to the UK market over the next couple of years and said the group maintains a foothold there despite the closure of several restaurants in recent months.

Two UK entities in the Camile group – Camile Thai Kitchen UK Ltd and Camile Thai Franchise UK Ltd – went into voluntary liquidation in April. The two companies owed creditors a combined £4.7 million (€5.4 million), most of it to other entities within the group, according to statements of affairs filed with Companies House in the UK.

Camile has now closed its UK offices and a number of group-controlled restaurants, although three outlets are still in operation under franchise, Mr Sweeney told The Irish Times.

Mr Sweeney, who previously founded O’Brien’s Irish Sandwich Bars, owns more than 90 per cent of the group, with a number of private investors – including tech investor Brian Caulfield and Manders Terrace, the company that owns Web Summit – also holding small stakes, according to company filings from last October.

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He said the decision to wind up the UK companies is part of a strategic refocus on Camile’s “flagship” business in Ireland, which continues to expand its footprint and will open its 50th restaurant here by the end of the year. “We’ve got to protect our position here in Ireland,” he said. “We have a decent business here and we want to hang on to that and the UK is tougher than we thought it would be.”

Camile first entered the UK market seven years ago, starting in London, which Mr Sweeney said was “a mistake from our point of view”. He said: “Companies like Deliveroo and Just Eat are much stronger in London than in Ireland. They charge very high commissions for businesses, and for a business like ours, which is delivery focused as opposed to dine-in focused, that’s a really big impact for us.”

Mr Sweeney said the decision to put the companies into liquidation “was really about getting rid of our leases” and that “we hope to get back into the market again in a year or two, but we do have a foothold”. He said: “It’s a failure of the business model, rather than people didn’t like our Thai food.”

In Ireland, where the Camile Group directly operates seven restaurants, with the remaining 40 or so outlets operated under franchise by independent groups and individuals, Mr Sweeney said he expects group revenues to top €40 million this year, up €10 million from 2021.

The group expects seven locations for its new Indian takeaway brand, Thindi, to be operational by the end of September, including Blackrock, Walkinstown and Dundrum. The Camile group will also continue to the rollout of its dining option at Terminal 2 in Dublin Airport and its Petite Camile format at the Circle K petrol station in Dublin Airport.

Mr Sweeney said that while the cost of living crisis had impacted discretionary spending in 2022 after two strong years during the pandemic, “it has come back a little bit this year, but it’s kind of stabilised now in April and May”. He said that consumer sentiment had been “kind of relentlessly getting worse” but that customers now have seen “that the worst hasn’t come to pass”. Consequently, he said that there is “reasonable grounds to think things might improve next year” if energy prices continue to retreat from high levels.