A 70% rise in average annual profits over the past three years served up by Bristol-based Caribbean restaurant chain Turtle Bay has put it among the UK’s fastest-growing firms.
The firm, launched by chief executive Ajith Jayawickrema in 2010, appears in the latest annual Sunday Times BDO Profit Track 100 league table, which ranks Britain’s private companies with the fastest-growing profits over three years. 
Ajith had previously founded Latin eatery group Las Iguanas, taking that national after it also started with a single outlet in Bristol.
Turtle Bay, pictured, has since grown to 42 sites in the UK and two in Germany. Profits grew by an average of 70% to £12m in 2017 and the group now employs 1,390 staff.
Its average annual growth of 70% over the past three years has earned it a place in the Profit Track table at number 54, allowing it to rub shoulders with rapid-growth national groups such as sandwich shop chain Pret A Manger and gym operator PureGym.
It is also the highest-ranking South West company in the table, appearing nine places above feminine hygiene products brand Natracare, the only other Bristol-based business in it.
Natracre, which makes the world’s first certified organic cotton tampons and employs 15 people, had an average profit growth rate of 65% over the past three years. Its latest profit came in at £4.5m.
Also making its debut at 95 in the table is Longleat Enterprises, the leisure firm that operates the famous safari park and Cheddar Gorge and Caves, for the first time.
Its profits came in at £3.5m in 2016 as it benefited from increased visitor numbers, boosted by TV exposure on the BBC’s popular Animal Park series. Profits grew by an average of 55% over three years. Its 9,000-acre safari park is home to 500 animals.
Despite cost pressures caused in part by the fall in value of Sterling, all 100 companies in the table increased sales and average profit margins rose from 8% to 15%.
The league table and awards programme is sponsored by BDO and UBS Wealth Management, and is compiled by Fast Track, the Oxford-based research and networking events firm.
BDO partner and South West head Andrea Bishop said: “These high-growth, high-energy and highly-entrepreneurial companies will be the difference between success and failure in our post-Brexit economic future.
“These businesses are playing their part by recording strong levels of revenue and profit growth and by creating jobs. We’d like to see the government do more to help them by focusing on skills, infrastructure investment and tax simplification.”
This year’s Profit Track 100 companies achieved, on average, profit growth of 77% a year over three years, to a total of £1.1bn in 2016/17. Together they employ 52,600 staff, having added 20,000 employees to their combined workforce over the period, some as a result of acquisitions.
The full league table will be published as a six-page broadsheet supplement in the business section of The Sunday Times this Sunday, both in print and in the digital edition, and on www.fasttrack.co.uk
