Popular city centre restaurant D'Acqua reduces asking price by half

Specialist property business advisor, Christie & Co have reduced the asking price for D’acqua, in John Street, from £150,000 to £75,000.

Housed in the old Sunderland and South Tyneside water board building, hence its name, the restaurant has been operated by owners Jimmy and Hannah Shadforth for a number of years and has built up a good reputation in that time.

The business was closed during the COVID-19 lockdown, however, since reopening trade has bounced back and average weekly sales have remained robust. A take-away service is also generating a good amount of revenue.

It’s been on the market since before lockdown.

Mr Shadforth said: “We have decided to reduce the price to try and facilitate a quicker sale, as we have a really exciting new project that we are looking forward to getting our teeth into, but it’s impossible to do that and run the restaurant at the same time.

"We took our time when re-opening after lockdown because we wanted to get it 100% right for our staff and our customers. We’re following the government guidance down to the letter and the feedback we’ve had from customers has been excellent.

"The take-away service we’re now offering has proven so much more popular than we thought – we deliberately kept it quiet and announced that we would start at 4pm on Friday 18th September and on that night we took 40 orders! Our customers feel completely safe and at ease when they dine with us and we’re proud of that.”

David Cash, Associate Director at Christie & Co, who is handling the sale, said: “Many restaurant businesses still remain closed, or are trading at such a limited capacity that they aren’t profitable. Since reopening, D’Acqua has come close to achieving pre-COVID levels of turnover without compromising on the quality of their offer.

“The reduction in price is no reflection on the performance of the business. To fit out/equip a restaurant of this quality would cost way in excess of £75,000 and so to offer a trading business with a huge amount of goodwill for sale at this level presents an incredible opportunity for a prospective buyer.”

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