The administrators of Café Rouge and Bella Italia have appointed CAPA to conduct full audits on more than 250 restaurants and properties occupied by the chains.
CAPA will be undertaking a large-scale audit of accounts payable data across the company, as well as audits of all property costs throughout each of the restaurants, after the business recovery firm AlixPartners was appointed to the chains’ owner, Casual Dining Group.
This marks the latest of CAPA’s many appointments to audit dining chains with sites around the country, after the Audit team was recently instructed on The Handmade Burger Co, and WrapChic, and others during the past year.
After struggling due to the severe trading conditions in the casual dining market, Casual Dining Group had recently been exploring multiple offers to acquire the business, although these offers envisage a reduced restaurant estate.
After their appointment as administrators on July 2, Clare Kennedy, Peter Saville, Daniel Imison and Catherine Williamson of AlixPartners are now progressing the acquisition talks. While doing so they have appointed CAPA to conduct the full accounts payable and property audits.
That means CAPA’s Audit team will be brought in to conduct a forensic analysis of all data related to invoices paid out across the entire company. The team will use bespoke software to identify any anomalies or issues in the invoices before recovering any overspend for the administrators.
The auditors will also be interrogating all data related to property costs across the entire Casual Dining Group portfolio. This will involve inspecting data on rates, utility bills, service management and other costs at each restaurant and office the group occupied. Again, they will look to discover any errors and overpaid sums, which they can then recover for AlixPartners.
