Honest Burgers, the British burger brand, is acquiring 12 Gourmet Burger Kitchen sites, expanding its restaurant portfolio to over 50 locations. The new sites will broaden the brand’s footprint in London, as well as transforming their national reach, in bringing the Honest passion for quality and service to new customers across the Midlands, the South East, and East Anglia.
With this, Honest Burgers moves into the accelerated growth phase of their 2030 strategy and has been facilitated by an injecMon of new funding from exisMng shareholders and a senior debt package provided by OakNorth. This will also be used to invest in a new state-of-the-art central prep kitchen, where Honest proudly prepare everything freshly from scratch every day.
Matt Brandon, CEO of Honest Burgers, shared: “Growing our footprint is a key priority for the brand, and the new investment and refinancing is a vote of confidence in the business following a fantastic commercial performance last financial year. We are delighted to add brand-new locations to our group and welcome a whole new team into Honest to share our passion for great quality burgers, fantastic hospitality and exceptional value for our customers.”
Thomas Kelly, chair of Honest Burgers Board, “This acquisition is an important step in our strategic plan to quadruple the size of our business over the next 5 years. We’re excited about the journey ahead and the opportunity this brings.”
Stuart Blair, debt finance director at OakNorth, commented: ”Honest Burgers is a standout brand in the UK casual dining space, combining strong values with operational excellence and a loyal customer following. We’ve been impressed by the team’s disciplined approach to growth, their consistent performance post-Covid, and their innovation. We’re proud to support them as they scale to the next level.”
This announcement follows a busy year for Honest Burgers which has included the launch of the first Honest “Smash + Grab” site in Liverpool Street at the end of 2024, and a successful launch of Honest Insiders in June 2025, the brand’s first digital rewards app with exclusive rewards for customers.
The newly acquired sites will all be converted into Honest Burgers restaurants and will offer the Honest Burgers menu, including the original Honest Burger & famous rosemary salted chips as well as the popular Smashed range. Each new site will work closely with local partners, including nearby breweries highlighting Honest’s commitment to supporting neighbours.
MarBn Owen, group people director of Boparan Restaurant Group, said: “This is a strategic opportunity for Gourmet Burger Kitchen which allows us to focus on our core growth area of delivery. Selecting who we sold the sites to was a vital part of this process. We needed to ensure that they had the right values and would do the right thing by our amazing colleagues. We thank our colleagues for their exceptional commitment and contribution to the brand.”
James Dodd, group head of marketing for Boparan Restaurant Group, added: “Over the last couple of years, we’ve seen really strong growth in our delivery business for GBK . This led us to trialling a partnership with a leading national delivery kitchen operator across multiple sites around the UK over the last 12 months. We are really happy with the results of that partnership, and we now plan to roll out across a further 100 locations. This will mean we are able to serve more of our guests in more locations than ever before.”
