James Brown, head of European Retail & Leisure Research & Consulting with JLL said the move would enable JLL to ‘provide comprehensive food and beverage consulting advice to a broad mix of clients across the region’.
Reading-based Coverpoint was founded by managing director Jonathan Doughty, who is also worldwide president of the FCSI (Foodservice Consultants Society International).
He said the consultancy advised on all aspects of the food and beverage offer, including commercial and operational performance analysis, benchmarking, standards monitoring and due diligence.
“Recent international projects include work for developers, corporate occupiers and investors looking to acquire or asset manage real estate operations with food and beverage components.”
Brown added: “Food and beverage is an offer that is more resilient to the impact of e-commerce and retail polarisation and it adds significant value to user experience in the physical environment.
“Coverpoint has an impressive and unparalleled track-record across the global foodservice industry, from retail real estate investors, to restaurateurs and corporate occupiers, and bringing Coverpoint into JLL will help us meet the growing client demand for this type of consulting service.
“The foodservice sector is going through a phenomenal growth phase, restaurateurs are emerging and expanding and landlords are taking a closer look at how they can improve the food and beverage offer to drive value and experience.
“From larger corporate occupiers looking at workplace strategy, to traditional retail real estate investors to smaller star-up restaurant groups, the food and beverage sector is in huge demand, but getting strategies right is still the key to success.”
Doughty said: “Joining JLL will broaden our capacity, client base and will enable us to bring our collective global foodservice insights to the fore.”
The Coverpoint team joins JLL with immediate effect, reporting to Brown, and relocating to JLL’s Heathrow office in 2015. At any one time, JLL has around 30 European retail advisers working on food and beverage projects.
JLL is the brand name of Jones Lang LaSalle, which has annual turnover of £2.88bn, runs 200 offices in 75 countries and has a global workforce of 53,000.