The popular Dingles restaurant on the top floor of Plymouth’s House of Fraser store will reopen a year after the company that ran it went into administration owing more than £1.5m.
The eatery , following the first Covid lockdown, because Sheffield-based catering chain Massarella Gelaterie Ltd had ceased trading.
But the Plymouth restaurant has now been bought by a sister company Massarella Restaurants Ltd and it is reopening in Plymouth having rehired some of the workers made redundant when the chain went belly up.
A spokesperson for Massarella Restaurants said: “Massarella Gelaterie Ltd went into administration back in March 2020, Recently Massarella Restaurants Ltd has purchased the assets for this restaurant from the administrators.
“We have already recruited and are delighted some of the previous employees of the restaurant have joined the team.”
It means Dingles will start serving diners again from Wednesday, June 30, and a spokesperson for Massarella Restaurants said: “Dingles restaurant welcomes the reopening of its doors to Plymouth. The food and drink menu has something to entice everyone, with quick and efficient service and a menu to satisfy everyone’s tastes.”
The restaurant, on the fifth floor of the city centre department store will offer breakfasts, freshly made sandwiches and sourdough toasties, “traditional hot food”, hot and cold drinks and a selection of cakes and pastries.
“It is the ideal place for a business lunch, lunch with friends or simply a quick coffee whilst out shopping in the Plymouth area,” the spokesperson said.
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Dingles will also be serving children’s meals with a “pick ‘n’ mix” plus a range of hot food offerings, and contain a children’s area with toys, colouring sheets and books, with the spokesperson saying: “Kids can play in a safe environment whilst mum enjoys a coffee and slice of cake.”
Dingles closed when Prime Minister Boris Johnson ordered a lockdown of businesses to prevent the spread of coronavirus on March 20, 2020.
Within days Massarella Gelaterie - which ran restaurants and coffee shops in various House of Fraser (now called Frasers Group) stores - went into administration, with documents filed at Companies House revealing it had liabilities amounting to an estimated £1,537,675.
Massarella Gelaterie ran restaurants in 32 House of Fraser stores, many under the Cafe Zest branding. They all closed and 340 workers were made redundant and had to claim redundancy payments, along with outstanding wages and holiday pay, from the Government as Massarella Gelaterie did not have the funds to pay them.
Company bosses blamed the coronavirus crisis for causing it to go under with parent firm Massarella Catering Group Ltd’s annual accounts saying: “Whilst the position of the company was considered to be manageable pre-Covid-19, the directors did not consider its funding profile to be strong enough to survive the predicted impacts of the pandemic.”
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Nevertheless, various parts of the Sheffield-based Massarella company sought to buy some of the closed restaurants. In April 2021, administrators reported that various Massarella companies had offered to buy 15 of the restaurants out of administration for about £92,000 in total.
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The offer included the diners in Manchester, Sutton Coldfield, Nottingham, Edinburgh, Norwich, Worcester, Lincoln, Huddersfield, Telford, Darlington and Plymouth.
Massarella Restaurants made a profit of £225,629 in 2019, but the parent company Massarella Catering Group Ltd made a loss of £53,944 in 2019,
Massarella Catering Group is a family business that can trace its origin to an ice cream enterprise founded in 1864 by Italians who emigrated to Sheffield.
Before the COVID-19 pandemic the group ran more than 120 cafes and restaurants around the 海角视频 under various brand names. It continues to run outlets under the names Cafe Zest, Wild Mint Kitchen Cafe, Caffe Botanico and Angelica’s Tea and Cake.