Former Avoca chief’s Roundwood Stores gets €350,000 investment boost for boutique inn bedrooms revamp

Earlier this month, NP Holdings, a UK-based entity linked to FL Partners, invested over €348,000 in Roundwood Stores Limited.

In April 2023, the Sunday Independent reported that Hughes and Crowley had been appointed as directors of the company.

In response to questions, Pratt said the additional investment was made to help refurbish the bedrooms above the neighbouring pub, The Coach House, which the company bought and turned into a restaurant and boutique inn.

The rooms above The Coach House have recently opened for bookings.

The Roundwood Stores, based in Roundwood, Co Wicklow, was founded in 2021 by Pratt, his wife Monique McQuaid and her son Jake McCarthy.

The store, which has a courtyard garden seating area and a small café, is focused on selling local artisan products and baked goods produced on-site.

Pratt had been the head of Avoca between 2002 and 2017.

The company was founded in 1974 by his father, Donald, who acquired a woollen mill in the Co Wicklow town of the same name. It subsequently became a premium food and retail operation spread across the country.

US food services giant Aramark bought Avoca from the Pratt family in 2015 for over €50m.

When Hughes and Crowley became directors of Roundwood Stores, the company also appointed Tara O’Neill who had been CEO of Avoca after Pratt left as well as a director on the board of the Jamie Oliver group.

Dublin-based FL Partners, which Crowley and Hughes founded in 2006, also operates in the UK, Europe and the US.

FL Partners has also backed The Tramyard in Dalkey

Hughes was previously CEO of Island Capital from 1998 to 2004, an in-house corporate finance resource and investment vehicle for businessman Denis O’Brien, while Crowley had been CEO of IBI Corporate Finance, one of Ireland’s leading corporate finance houses, for seven years, ending in 2006.

FL Partners has backed The Tramyard in Dalkey and acquired the mixed-use site 51 Dawson Street in Dublin alongside golfer Rory McIlroy.