Eik Serving, the company behind restaurants such as Brasserie Ouest and Smalhans, has now sold Dugurd canteens to Norvestor-owned 4Service.
The restaurant group bought a majority stake in Dugurd last year as part of its diversification strategy, after seeing great opportunities to develop a canteen leg within the Eik system.
– But when this opportunity with 4Service appeared, we quickly saw that this would be a better solution. This is a win-win for all parties, and a deal we couldn’t say no to, says chairman of Eik, Erlend Karlseng.
For reasons of competition, however, he cannot state anything concrete about the purchase price.
– For our part, Eik is now in a very favorable financial position. We have built up several hundred million on the books, have a moderate level of debt, and are ready to bring in new winning concepts into the Eik family, says the chairman.
Acquisition No. 18
Dugurd is thus taking 200 employees and customers such as the National Museum, Finn.no and Braathen Eiendom over to the heavyweight 4Service, which before the purchase already had 6,000 employees and three concepts for staff restaurants.
The CMO of 4Service, Marius Pedersen, does not want to say anything about the size of the transaction either, but points out that it is an agreement that all parties are happy with.
– The acquisition of Dugurd is our 18th acquisition since 4Service was started in 2010, and marks a strengthened investment for us towards the premium part of the canteen market. This is one of several growing market segments where we have great ambitions for the next few years, says Pedersen, and points out that Dugurd will also be an important contributor to the company achieving its goals of delivering the most sustainable solutions within canteens and staff restaurants.
Trygve Hegnar, responsible editor and owner of Finansavisen, is a co-owner of Eik Servering through his investment company Periscopus.
