They expect to rake in £50,000 a week from a delivery kitchen, which would equate to £2.6 million a year, and also opened a larger restaurant in Woolwich in July to boost the brand.
Goldberg and Duncan admit they have no restaurant experience. They met while working at Unilever in the Eighties and, after parting ways, both ended up in private equity.
Goldberg worked in marketing for brewer Scottish & Newcastle, the then owner of Center Parcs, which he went to run in Holland. It was sold to Deutsche Bank Capital Partners, which made him an operating partner at MidOcean, Deutsche Bank’s old buyout arm.
Duncan went into consulting before joining Nomura, which then spun out Terra Firma, run by Hands. “Terra Firma was a fantastic experience but it got to a point where our kids were in their mid-teens and I said to Guy ‘I need to step off the gas a bit’,” he says, his soft Edinburgh tones the perfect foil for the more animated Goldberg.
Duncan, who remains on the board of Odeon cinemas and is still an adviser to Terra Firma, concedes they needed help setting up Clockjack. They managed to convince David Moore, the restaurateur behind Michelin-starred Pied à Terre, to join as a director when the business was a mere pipe dream.
Moore also invested, along with about 30 others rounded up by their financial adviser, as they raised £1 million for their ambitions plans in the belief there was room for another chicken restaurant besides Nando’s.
They hope to tap up their private-equity contacts once the business grows some wings.
Learning the trade hasn’t exactly been a chore. “You’ve got to try the roast chicken wherever you go to make sure we’ve got the right standard here,” Duncan says.
With a grin, Goldberg insists it’s important they eat out as much as possible: “Chatting with the kids about food — that counts as work.”
