London & South East

Building up Bill’s

Serving up delicious and tasty meals from breakfast through to dinner, Bill’s is a popular and ever-expanding café/restaurant which offers up fresh dishes throughout the day.

To date there are nineteen Bill’s in the UK – with six located in the London area alone – with sites based in Bath, Brighton, Guildford, Horsham, Reading and St Albans, to name but a few.

Bill’s Hosham and Bill’s Guildford opened in December 2012 and have already proved successful with customers. The restaurants followed hot on the heels of Bill’s Cardiff and Bill’s Chichester, rounding out a busy year of expansion for the brand.

The latest restaurant to open in the Bill’s portfolio is Bill’s Holborn which opened its doors in May 2013 at 42 Kingsway. Moving forward in 2013, Bill’s Holborn will soon be followed in June by Bill’s Putney at 146 – 145 Putney High Street and Bill’s Westfield at 1071 Southern Terrace.

A further site for the portfolio is Bill’s Kensington High Street which is due to open in Kensington Arcade this summer. The new café will continue Bill’s tradition of serving up exquisite food, within comfortable surroundings, and will become the 23rd site to bear the Bill’s name.

Such is the ever increasing profile of Bill’s that in 2012 the Observer listed Bill’s amongst its ‘seven great places for breakfast’, whilst The Independent ranked it within the Top Ten of its 50 best breakfast spots. The Bill’s brand continues to roll out, yet with each site Bill’s continues to impress all who walk into its premises.

Bill Collison founder of Bill’s, said:

“Our ethos couldn’t be simpler; we aim to look after our customers well and serve them great seasonal dishes at good prices. That’s why our customers come back time and again.”

Bill’s menu is crammed with mouth watering, classic meals guaranteed to tempt the taste buds. From home-made cod fish finger sandwiches and piri-piri marinated half chicken, through to 10 oz chargrilled English rib eye steak and chicken Caesar salad.

In addition to a packed breakfast, lunch and dinner menu, Bill’s also offers up a selection of tea time treats courtesy of its Tea Time & Puddings menu. From warm scones and toasted tea cakes to Eton mess, lemon meringue pie cheesecake and warm pecan pie, Bill’s has enough favourite dishes to satisfy all tea traditionalists.

Speaking of tea, Bill’s menu also includes a range of beverages, from camomile, Darjeeling and English breakfast through to freshly squeezed orange juice and chocolate brownie milkshake. If something a little stronger is what you are after, fear not, for Bill’s has a fully packed drinks menu which includes beers, wines and spirits.

The first Bill’s café to open was in 2001, under the name of Bill’s Produce Store and Café. The relatively small business served up jams and chutneys, alongside baked goods and thanks to a positive response from customers became the beginning of the Bill’s story.

In addition to its growing collection of restaurants, Bill’s also stocks a selection of hampers and goodies, allowing diners the opportunity to take a piece of the restaurant home with them.

For more information about Bill’s restaurants, to make a reservation, or to even try out a few of Bill’s recipes, please visit: www.bills-website.co.uk.

Chapman Ventilation

Starting life as a general ventilation company in 1967, Chapman Ventilation has since become an industry-leading supplier of bespoke, energy-efficient ventilation and air conditioning systems specifically for the UK restaurant industry. It specialises in delivering entire HVAC solutions often in high profile and environmentally sensitive locations for clients such as Tom Sellers’ Story, Hawksmoor and Bill’s.

One of the fastest growing concepts this year, Chapman Ventilation has been working closely with Bill’s over the past six months to help roll out its brand across the UK. Staying true to its roots, many of its sites are in unique locations – Horsham’s Old Town Hall, for example, or the Wellington Street site directly underneath London’s Lyceum Theatre.

The challenge in such prime historic locations is often associated with making the original building fit for purpose: transforming an 18th century town hall into a functioning restaurant with appropriate heating, extraction and filtration, but without damaging the integrity of the building or sacrificing performance. In Horsham, Chapman Ventilation fitted bespoke CCA (Canopy Containment Air) technology hoods in the kitchen and developed and installed air conditioning for the restaurant space.

Frankie Sharman, Project Manager for the Bill’s portfolio, said:

“It’s great to be involved at such an exciting stage of Bill’s expansion plans. We’ve recently been working hard on several upcoming sites so it will be good to see them open in the next couple of months.”

Visit www.chapmanventilation.co.uk or follow @chapmanvent for more information.

About the author

Roma Publications