Carl Clarke readies Disco Brands funding push into India
The Chicken Shop founder is opening a funding round for Disco Brands and will travel to India in December to meet prospective franchise partners.
Carl Clarke, the chef who built Chicken Shop into an eight-site London chain, is opening a funding round for Disco Brands, the platform he set up this year to take independent food brands into new markets, starting with India.
Clarke stepped away from Chicken Shop in May, after the investment group Kitchen Ventures bought a majority stake in the business he founded more than a decade ago as Chik'n. The chain now runs eight sites across London, from Baker Street to Canary Wharf. Clarke kept hold of Disco Brands, the venture he had already begun building alongside it.
Disco Brands works as a franchise and licensing platform rather than a restaurant group of its own. It finds food brands with an existing following and builds the operational and legal structure to open them in new territories through local partners, rather than running the sites itself.
A restaurant brand in London or New York can already have fans in India before it's ever opened there.
A platform built after Chicken Shop
The funding round, confirmed on 6 November, will cover platform development, the first international partnership agreements and preparation for Disco Brands' debut launches abroad. Clarke has not disclosed a target amount or named any investors so far.
"The global QSR category hasn't evolved with culture," Clarke said when he first outlined the venture in May. By November, he was already naming the market where that argument would be tested first.
Chick'n Sours, Clarke's earlier cocktail-and-fried-chicken concept, closed its two London restaurants last year but survives through events and pop-ups — evidence, in Clarke's telling, that a brand's fanbase can outlast its physical sites.
Why India is the first target
Clarke will travel to India in December to meet prospective franchise and development partners, part of what he calls active conversations already under way across several territories, alongside the Gulf.
"A restaurant brand in London or New York can already have fans in India before it's ever opened there," Clarke said. "We want to take brands people already love into new markets without losing what made them special in the first place."
No brand, partner or site has been confirmed for India yet. Clarke says further announcements are expected in the coming months, once the funding round closes and the December meetings turn conversations into agreements.
Related: Darden seeks a UK franchise partner for Olive Garden and Bulbul brings micro-regional Indian cooking to London.
