Island Grill plans to grow its restaurant network by two-thirds to 30 outlets by 2030, a target that overtakes the goal the chain set a year ago.
Chief Executive Officer Tania Waldron-Gooden told the Financial Gleaner that the company will add “an additional 12 over the next four years” to the 18 restaurants it now runs across Kingston and St Andrew, St Catherine, Ocho Rios in St Ann, Mandeville in Manchester, and Montego Bay in St James.
To get there, Island Grill has created a dedicated estate manager post and retained a financial institution as adviser and broker on the expansion – a shift from the opportunistic store-by-store growth that built the chain since its 1991 start as Chicken Supreme.
The new target raises the bar the company set in September 2025, when it said it wanted at least 25 stores within three to four years at a cost of US$10 million to US$14 million.
Waldron-Gooden said the company intends to deepen its reach along Jamaica’s north and west coasts while it weighs opportunities on the eastern end of the island.
“Expansion into other areas covering more of the north coast and west coast, if you can call it that, in the western end of the country,” she said. “So, establishing more presence there as well, and exploring some opportunities on the eastern end as well.”
The buildout will be split between two formats. Island Grill’s large-format restaurants, which it calls “motherships” internally, which offers dedicated dining, along with smaller in-line stores in food courts and other high-traffic areas.
“We’re looking at expanding the bigger ones,” Waldron-Gooden said, adding that the company is concentrating on the mothership and in-line concepts as it scales.
Island Grill has funded the programme from its own cash so far, she said, but has engaged an adviser as it evaluates funding options and structures.
“Right now, what we have done so far, we’re self-funded,” Waldron-Gooden said. “So far, but we have engaged an adviser. I don’t want to put the name down, but a financial institution is our adviser and broker on the expansion project.”
The comment marks a change in tone from a year ago, when the company said it had turned to NCB Capital Markets for financing and also planned to draw bank loans from National Commercial Bank and Bank of Nova Scotia Jamaica. Media reports in 2024 indicated that Island Grill was mulling a listing on the Jamaica Stock Exchange over the medium to long term.
Site searches are already under way, and the company expects visible development within the next year and a half.
“I would say in another 18 months, because we are already inserting for the mothership type projects,” she said.
The estate manager, whose post Island Grill recently advertised, will identify sites, negotiate leases, and manage the property portfolio.
“Basically, they’re in charge of all our leases, because that’s the kind of structure we have now,” Waldron-Gooden said. “The team used to do it themselves, now we want somebody dedicated to that.”
Island Grill specialises in grilled chicken, fried fish and vegetarian meals served with rice and peas or festival. It competes against US-franchised chains such as KFC and Popeyes on one side and local operators Juici Patties and Tastee on the other.
The company did not disclose its turnover. It had previously told the Financial Gleaner that sales surpassed $1 billion around 2012, when it ran 15 stores, and topped $2 billion by 2019. Revenue then fell 43 per cent during the pandemic. Founder and Deputy Chairman Thalia Lyn said last year that the chain had returned to double-digit revenue growth.
Jamaica’s entire consumer food service sector generated an estimated US$700 million in sales in 2017, the most recent figure the United States Department of Agriculture has published in 2018, with chain establishments taking 40 per cent of that. Quick-service restaurants are the fastest-growing part of the restaurant subsector, which itself accounts for about 28 per cent of the wider hotel, restaurant and institutional market, the report indicated.
Island Grill has retrenched from overseas before. Stores in Barbados and Florida were both closed as the company refocused on Jamaica.
neville.graham@gleanerjm.com
