and restaurant business KBK has revealed ambitious plans to open “in every major city” after it rebranded from Kettlebell Kitchen.
KBK said it plans to open a new site in Liverpool by the end of the year, with plans to eventually open six sites in total.
The original Kettlebell Kitchen business was founded in Ancoats by Carley Jones in 2017 in January 2019 due to a number of outlets becoming “unprofitable”.
Ms Jones in Newcastle in April last year, after she announced the previous month she was business.
, who is director of KBK, said it was “a vital time” to relaunch and re-brand the business.
He said: “KBK has strong foundations and we believe that this rebrand will open the service and eateries up to a whole new audience that will be sure to love the food and reap its rewards,” he said.
Gary Salisbury, KBK operations manager, told BusinessLive the reason for the re-brand “was because the word 'kettlebell' applies more to people who go to gyms”.
“We wanted to re-brand to appeal to a wider audience which is exactly what it has achieved, we’ve got families coming in there now, we’ve got business people coming in there, we’ve got people from the office and surrounding areas coming in.
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“We obviously still cater for people who are very health and fitness focused but we now appeal to the wider audience.”
He continued: “The old Kettlebell [Kitchen] business failed, we’re going to acknowledge that and going to acknowledge why.
“It was down to a number of reasons but one of them could be that the market was too niche and we did extensive customer service surveys prior to our re-branding.
“[People] thought you could really only go in there if you went to a gym and in perfect shape which is not the case but the perception the public had, it definitely wasn’t a place you could take your children, let’s put it that way.”
Mr Salisbury said the rebrand has resulted in a rise in KBK's sales, footfall and employment, and the business employed five additional people in its Ancoats site in 2019.
He said the first priority for the business after it was bought out of liquidation was to make sure employees were paid and “rescue it from huge losses it was making”.
“We managed to turn that around, the company’s very profitable now and it was to understand and try and unravel why it failed, and that took us a while to get to the bottom of why, from a commercial perspective.
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“We’ve got a new store manager starting next week who ultimately will take that store to the next level.”
The business said it also hopes the changes will “reinvigorate” its national meal prep service.
“We're always evolving," he said.
"We listened to our audience, we did extensive surveys, you can do a three-day taster, we now cater for students.
“Our meal prep historically was very expensive and that was the problem with attracting more people.
"Th average plan was £495 a month, but now our plans start from £30 a week, we do vegan, we do vegetarian, we do keto, so we’re trying to appeal to everybody really.”
The business’s new brand was created by Manchester branding agency Ahoy, in .
Mr Salisbury added: “Obviously what’s happened in the past has happened in the past and that is literally behind us and we’ve turned the business around, all employees are being paid, supplies being paid we’ve got growth plans now and it’s a success story for Manchester if nothing else.”