Restaurant Group has a testing time over horse meat scare

The Restaurant Group, owner of the Frankie & Benny's, Chiquito and Garfunkel's chains, has spent "over £100,000" independently testing more than 150 of its product lines in the last five weeks since the horse meat scare.

"We've had back 95 per cent of the results and they are all clear," said the chief executive, Andrew Page. "There has been absolutely no discernable change in what customers are ordering. And while like-for-like sales are up 6.5 per cent in the first eight weeks of the year, February was actually much stronger than January despite the scare stories."

Sales rose by 9 per cent during 2012 with pre-tax profits up 7 per cent to £64.6m.