Byron went from £100M to £856,000 in ten years

Tom Byng founded Byron in 2007, and the premium burger chain grew until private equity firm Hutton Collins bought it for £100 million in 2013. The expansion continued to 67 restaurants — straight into Britain's casual dining crunch, with a creditor restructuring in 2017 under owner Three Hills Capital and a full restructure in 2018.

The pandemic finished the first act. Byron filed notice of administration in June 2020; on 31 July 2020 it was sold to Calveton for £4 million, with 31 restaurants closed and 651 jobs axed. A recovery flickered — monthly EBITDA turned positive after lockdown — but food and energy prices and the cost-of-living squeeze brought a £1.6 million EBITDA loss for the year to July 2022.

Administrators from Interpath took over in October 2022, and in January 2023 Byron was sold again, to Tristar Foods, for £856,000 — £800,000 of it goodwill and intellectual property, the rest assets from closed sites. Nine more restaurants shut; twelve survived. Ten years after the £100 million sale, the chain was worth less than one percent of it.