The Tribune

By NATARIO McKENZIE

Tribune Business Reporter

nmckenzie@tribunemedia.net

PRESIDENT and CEO of AML Foods Limited Gavin Watchorn told Tribune Business yesterday it expected to break ground on its flagship Carl's Jr restaurant in late October - early November and had already picked out a site for its second location.

Mr Watchorn said: "We hope to break ground in October this year. It's taken us a little longer than we had hoped to find a location but when you bring a new brand and concept you have to make sure it's a home run and so we were patient, took our time and waited until we got the site that we felt was going to give us the greatest impact for introducing a new brand.

"We hope to break drown in late October. We have got our second site picked out as well but we want to do the first one right, establish ourselves, the first one is going to plant our flag. We have no set time frame for opening other stores."

Mr Watchorn said that he was pleased with AML's financial results for its first quarter ending April 30, where the retailing group saw a sales increase $6.05 million or 27.5 per cent over the same period in the previous year.

"We're pleased with our sales increase. It's coming from two sources. Obviously Solomon's Fresh Market is new this year so we are getting a boost from that but a more important measure of any retailer is same store sales in our existing business and we are very pleased with that. We think it's a result of a couple of strategies that we have put in place, offering people value, offering people savings and we are seeing that in average transaction increases people are spending more money with us and we are satisfied that they are spending more money with us rather than shopping around."

The BISX listed retail group has also announced that it has secured the lease to open the Solomon's Fresh Market concept in the Harbour Bay Shopping Plaza. Mr Watchorn said: "We are projecting to be in by the Christmas, beginning of December. In terms of jobs we project that we will hire approximately 80 people which is consistent with our employment levels our at Fresh Markets in Old Fort Bay. The opportunity came to us to enter into that lease and we seized it. We think it's going to be a similar investment to what we have in Old Fort Bay, so we're probably looking at 5 and a half to $6 million and that's inclusive of inventory, that's not capital investments, that's inventory preopening, training costs etc."