By YOURI KEMP
Tribune Business Reporter
ykemp@tribunemedia.net
A restaurant entrepreneur yesterday said he is targeting $2.4m in total sales for 2023 as he mulls opening a third location on Carmichael Road.
Chef Kevin Culmer, Tropical Gyros chief executive, told Tribune Business the third site will be near the Scotiabank branch on Carmichael Road. “We’re looking at Carmichael, but we don’t want to say just yet where on Carmichael until we sign the lease and make arrangements to fix the place up," he said. "It’s a high traffic area, there are other food operations in that area, so people traverse that area quite frequently.”
The possible third location for Tropical Gyros comes just months after the successful opening of its second location in the RND West Plaza on JFK Drive, which is now doing “extraordinarily well".
“I think we lucked out and made a good choice coming to this plaza. We’re doing very well and on pace to do about $1.2m for the year for both the Rosetta Street and RND locations. So we’re looking at $2.4m for the entire operation for the year," Chef Culmer added.
“We have the production and distribution centre opened at the RND location as well. That’s three doors down and that’s going well. This allows us to keep our consistency.” The sauces that Tropical Gyros has become known for outside of its wraps and gyros have to wait, however, as Chef Culmer tries to “work out all of the kinks".
Getting the product to the restaurants on time remains a priority, and he is confident this will improve soon. "As we are looking at our third location we have to find the money from somewhere. We had the ArawakX capital raise last year and we didn’t receive what we thought we would have received, so we have to be careful before we dip into our reserves to open up that new location on Carmichael Road," Chef Culmer said.
“We don’t want to be put in the position and, speaking with my advisors, they are saying we don’t want to take the little bit of our reserves we have developed over the first quarter and sink that into another location and then something drastic happens and we have no cash liquidity to carry us through the situation.”
External investments are needed for the proposed Carmichael Road expansion as the distribution centre costs money to operate and is pulling money from the existing locations.
Out of the $586,665 capital raised via ArawakX's crowdfunding, Mr Culmer said only $260,000 was actually collected in funds from people who pledged to invest. Getting the RND West location and distribution centre off the ground cost more than $300,000, forcing Tropical Gyros to dip into its reserves.
Despite this, Tropical Gyros has a “bright future” and is “hoping to come in where operational costs are 80 percent of revenue, so we are looking at at least a 20 percent profit margin".
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