Las Iguanas

The Bristol born restaurant inspired by the flavours of Mexico and South America that grew into a nationwide brand legend.

Invested in 2002, exited in 2007.

Las Iguanas, the UK’s leading Mexico and South American inspired restaurant chain, started life in Bristol in 1991. The brand’s founders, Eren Ali and Aj Jaya-Wickrema, spotted an opportunity to bring the bold, vibrant flavours of Mexico and South America to British customers with a menu that was both exciting and refreshingly different.

In 2002, Las Iguanas had successfully grown to four sites in Bath, Bristol and Birmingham. However, Eren and Aj had bigger ambitions – to take Las Iguanas nationwide. They recognised that achieving this vision required funding, but it was also critical for them to find investors who felt as strongly about the brand as they did.

They chose Piper because, as Eren saw it, “They had a passion for our business – as entrepreneurs they picked up on how important that was to us and there was a lot of value in that.”

During our partnership, not only did we support brand growth from four to 14 restaurants, but we also built value within the business leveraging our expertise in building brands. We helped the business develop its brand proposition and build the management team to ensure continued outstanding performance and a high growth rate.

When the time came to exit in 2007, we played a key role in identifying and nurturing relationships with strategic buyers. The result was a sale to Bowmark Capital, delivering a 6x return. At the time, sales had grown from £4 million to £16 million, and EBITDA has grown from £500,000 to £3 million.

Las Iguanas continues its success to this day with over 50 sites across the UK.