Ugot Seek Investment to Accerelate UK Growth

Start-up healthy eating company, UGOT, has announced this week that they are seeking investment to roll the brand out across the UK, nearly two years after successfully launching their first café and takeout store at York Station in October 2013. The second UGOT outlet followed just 9 months later in July 2014 in the newly refurbished Newcastle Central Station, which had just undergone an extensive £8.7m transformation. The company, which has its head office in Wetherby, Yorkshire, is now planning to launch their next healthy eating café and takeout sites in Harrogate at the end of October, closely followed by Newcastle city centre at the end of November. UGOT was created by co-founders Joe Carnell and Jamal Edwards (also founder of music platform, SBTV, and the face of Google Chrome, Virgin and Puma) after their frustration at the lack of decent, artery-friendly eateries on the high street. The business partners made it their mission to create stylish, friendly hangouts serving freshly-made, healthy food sourced from local producers. UGOT’s co-founder, 22-year-old Joe Carnell, was also recently shortlisted in the Lloyds Bank National Business Awards 2015 as a finalist for the ‘Duke of York New Entrepreneur of the Year’ award. The winner will be announced at the prestigious awards ceremony on 10th November at Grosvenor House, London. Mr Carnell said, “We’ve always had rapid growth plans for UGOT, but we’ve decided now is the time to step up our game and accelerate them. Both our York Station and Newcastle Central Station sites are performing exactly how we’ve forecasted them to – ultimately we want to make healthy food on-the-go accessible to everyone across the UK and the sooner we can make this happen the better. We’ve just spent the summer attending various festivals across the UK spreading our healthy eating message to revellers, including Parklife in Manchester, Lost Village in the Lincolnshire countryside and Shindig in Newcastle. Our UGOT offering included a cold press cocktail bar, with a range of cold press juices, cocktails and reverse osmosis water as well as gluten free snack pots and pots of fresh fruit in a bid to keep party-goers feeling energised. Jamal and I believe that food has the power to connect people and we want this to reflect through each one of our ÜGOT stores, giving customers a unique eating experience that embraces great music, innovative food and a real sense of community.”