WHEN it comes to new restaurant openings, Richard Morris is no amateur.
Inside Tortilla’s new Belfast city centre venue there’s a nervous energy on Friday morning as staff make the final preparations.
Cool FM is pumping music out to the dozens of people queued around the corner waiting for one of 200 free burritos the Mexican food chain will give away from noon on its first day.
For the past ten years the Tortilla boss has been doing something similar at dozens of locations around the UK.
But there’s slightly different energy of excitement in the air as his brand of Mexican casual dining takes its first step on the island of Ireland and throws down the gauntlet to Andrew and David Maxwell’sBoojum.
“We were a bit concerned,” admits Richard. “There’s a lot of loyalty to Boojum and quite rightly. They’re the local heroes, the boys have done good and absolutely fair play to them.
“I know them quite well, they’re really good lads.”
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But if the queue on Arthur Square on Friday was anything to go by, he needn’t have feared a backlash.
Rather than make Belfast a no—go area for competition, Richard believes Boojum has in fact carried the torch for Mexican food in Ireland.
“This is a very educated market for Mexican food because of Boojum.
“Everyone knows it and understands the concept of burritos and tacos.
“So we’re not coming in as we have done in other locations in the UK, where people haven’t been sure what the food is.”
Since being founded in London by California native Brandon Stephens in 2007, Tortilla has expanded into 67 UK locations and a franchise in the Middle East.
With a background in TGI Fridays and Rainforest Café, Richard Morris came on board in 2014.
Sitting inside the new Arthur Square restaurant overlooking the Spirit of Belfast sculpture, he reveals he first scouted out the location before the arrival of the Covid-19 pandemic.
“Every time I come here I feel the buzz, it’s a really positive place.”
His hopes on breaking the Irish market now rests on the new Belfast venue.
“We feel we probably have one of the best locations in the city. So if we fail here, then we would assume that we probably couldn’t find a better location.
“But we think we will do very well. There will be other opportunities we believe in Belfast.
“And then I think we’ll have to decide whether we go out to Coleraine, or Armagh or Londonderry or wherever we felt there was enough of a population.”
Tortilla also has aspirations of crossing the border eventually.
In terms of Belfast, Richard is optimistic. He feels the Arthur Square venue will hit the sweet spot of Tortilla’s traditional demographic of office workers, students, tourists and shoppers.
“The university is really investing in the area, there’s a lot of students moving in. So I sense there are going to be a lot more people living in the city centre.
“I definitely think there’s space for more than one Tortilla in Belfast.”
