An Italian restaurant group is to create up to 300 jobs as it expands over the next 18 months.
Tony Macaroni and Nardini's ice cream cafes have announced plans to create 20 more venues by 2015 as part of a major expansion plan across the central belt.
Six Tony Macaroni restaurants are already planned, with two for Edinburgh and one each for Braehead, Cumbernauld, Lanark and St Andrews. The other 14 new venues have not yet been revealed.
The firm said the plans would create up to 300 jobs in the food and drink sector and accommodate more than 1000 diners.
Sep Marini is managing director of Tony Macaroni and the Marini brand of fish and chip shops, as well as joint owner of Nardini's with business partner David Equi. He said: "Over the years we have established ourselves as Scotland's leading independently-owned Italian restaurant and ice-cream brand people have grown to love and trust.
"Continued investment and development of the businesses has enabled us to offer more and more people the authentic taste of Tony Macaroni and Nardini's throughout the central belt.
"The next 18 months will be an exciting time for the company as we create an even greater choice of venues in new and existing areas, as well as creating a significant number of jobs."
Nardini's and Tony Macaroni currently have 12 venues, including Glasgow's Merchant City and Byres Road, Livingston, Largs, Motherwell and Dunfermline.
Last year Tony Macaroni secured a £1.5 million finance deal with Bank of Scotland to assist towards the acquisition and fit-out costs of freehold restaurant premises in Dunfermline and the refurbishment of another new unit in Glasgow city centre.
It said the bank would continue to advise the company on its upcoming expansion plans. The bank also provided a further £1.5m re-finance deal to assist with the transfer of the Nardini's banking facilities.
David Murray, the bank's relationship director, said: "This rapidly expanding chain of popular catering venues has already made a tremendous contribution to Scotland's food and drink sector.
"The creation of up to 300 jobs following the latest expansion will be a very welcome boost to communities as economic recovery continues.
"Our team is seeing that overall business confidence levels remain high and the food and drink sector, in particular, is pushing ahead delivering exceptional growth.
"Continued opportunities exist for the industry in the year ahead and Bank Of Scotland remains a key supporter of the sector."
Nardini's was established over 100 years ago at Largs, Ayrshire, and Tony Macaroni set up in East Kilbride in October 2007.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article