A POPULAR Hereford burger restaurant is set to expand into a second unit at the Old Market Shopping Centre to increase its capacity.

The independent Beefy Boys will takeover the former Frankie and Benny's restaurant, while keeping its current one at the shopping centre in the city.

Since social distancing measures have been introduced, the Beefy Boys had to reduce their indoor capacity from 80 to 20, but with the new unit this can be increased again.

"We are pleased to announce that we will be knocking a hole in our wall and temporarily taking over the former Frankie and Benny's unit next door to The Beefy Boys," the restaurant said on its Facebook page.

"From the start of this pandemic our landlords have gone above and beyond to help us continue trading through what has been an extremely turbulent time for the hospitality industry and especially for a small local independent like us.

"Due to social distancing measures on our tables and increasing the size of our kitchen to allow our staff to work two metres apart we have seen the indoor capacity of our restaurant reduced from 80 covers to 20.

"We were lucky enough to be granted an extended outdoor seating area to help us through this difficult time. which has been great, but with the weather getting colder and the evenings drawing in we knew it would only be a viable alternative for a short period of time.

"We approached our landlord with the idea for us to temporarily take over the empty Frankie and Benny's unit next door for the next 12 months, allowing us to safely sit our customers indoors and hopefully giving us the space we need to still trade at our usual level, until (hopefully) the world returns to some form of normality next year.

"We will be doing a small amount of renovation work on the building and taking the opportunity to relaunch our menu with lots of exciting options on there that we can’t wait for people to try."

The Beefy Boys added the new space will be open from December 2 in time for the run up to Christmas, and thanked all customers for the "huge amount of support they have shown us since everyone's world was turned upside down back in March".

The Frankie and Benny's restaurant closed at the start of the first coronavirus lockdown in March and never reopened.