Numbers employed at the Brody Sweeney-led Camile Thai restaurant group are set to top 1,100 by the end of this year due to the opening of 15 new outlets in the Ireland, UK and the US.
Revenues at the group last year increased by 23 per cent across Ireland and the UK, Mr Sweeney said.
He was commenting on new accounts which show that profits at Camile Thai Kitchen Ltd last year more than tripled to €433,207 for the year.
Sales
On the 2020 performance, Mr Sweeney said: “Camile was extremely fortunate during the pandemic to have a business that is primarily located in residential suburbs, and which was doing 70 per cent of its sales off premises before the pandemic took hold. “It meant for Camile no material fall off of sales, but rather during the year we added sales at a good rate,” he added.
Asked about other Covid-19 impacts on the business, Mr Sweeney said: “It has accelerated the move to digital, where now more than half our sales come on our own proprietary app.”
He went on to say that it has “introduced a whole new cohort to the idea of hot food delivered to the home, many of whom have stayed with us as regular customers”.
The business has also been involved in a trial of Camile Thai orders being delivered by drone in Oranmore, Co Galway in a partnership with drone company Manna, involving thousands of deliveries to customers.
“This is the first service of its kind operating in Europe, and we hope to extend the trial into a bigger town later this year,” he said.
“Typically from drone to customer takes less than three minutes. Feedback has been extremely positive. Quicker than a car, and environmentally friendlier as well.”
Commenting on the chain’s 2021 performance, Mr Sweeney said: “While there has been some slow down in growth from very high growth in 2020, we are seeing that a lot of our new customers are “sticky” and continuing to re-order even as the country continues to open up from lockdown.”
Accumulated profits at the company last year totalled €2.5 million.
