A meat-andpotatoes focus

The good news for Gold Brands Investments and all who sail in her is that the company’s losses were significantly smaller in the year to February than they were in the previous year.

The bad news is that they were still sufficiently substantial for there to be a material uncertainty over whether it is a going concern, and for the auditors to issue a disclaimer.

The company operates a range of food brands, including its flagship Chesanyama, which offers truly heroic quantities of meat to people who prefer not to do the Weber-wrangling themselves.

Gold Brands has entered a partnership with the UK’S Casual Dining Group to launch new food concepts at an unsuspecting market — similar to the Latin American concept of Las Iguanas, whose menu offers a rapid tour around the various cuisines of its region while hopefully resisting the temptation to liven the experience up by tempting the punters with their favourite herbivorous lizard.

But it’s going to struggle to launch new brands without fixing the ones it is operating already, and this is a rather urgent matter.

Gold Brands is hoping to focus Chesanyama in particular in a more upmarket niche, targeting middle- to upper-lsm areas. This will be the key to ensuring its survival, but it is not being helped by tight trading conditions caused by never-ending pressure on its customers’ disposable income.

It is far from the easiest market in which to turn around a loss-making business. However, Gold Brands will need to achieve this at speed if it is to survive.