Loungers reaches 50 sites
Café/bar group Loungers will reach the 50-site milestone with the opening of Como Lounge in Witney in Oxford tomorrow (Wednesday 6 August).
The Bristol-based company was founded just 12 years ago and took until 2009 to reach double figures but has since expanded at a rapid rate and doubled in size over the past two years.
Managing director Alex Reilley (pictured), who this year won the Pub and Bar Catey, said he expected the business to reach more than 90 sites by 2017.
The new Witney site is located in former nightclub premises in the centre of the Oxfordshire town. The site is spread across two floors and at nearly 6,000 sq ft it is one of the group's largest venues. In addition to 160 covers internally, a 70-seater roof terrace has also been created to the rear of the first floor by removing a section of the flat roof.
Loungers is expected to open more Lounge sites this year in Kettering, Letchworth Garden City, Keynsham, Stroud, and Peterborough, as well as opening its eighth Cosy Club site in Leicester in October.
Speaking of the milestone of reaching 50 sites Loungers MD, Alex Reilley, said, "It's a tremendous achievement for the business to have reached 50 sites and it's certainly way, way, way beyond what Jake [co-founder Jake Bishop] and I dared to dream back in 2002.
"We're extremely proud of the business and most importantly the key role our people play in making what we do a success.
"Our next great challenge is to reach 100 sites, which we're pretty confident can be achieved by early 2017."
Meanwhile, the group also revealed that like-for-like sales for July were up 9.3% and that year-on-year sales for the month were up 47.7%.
Loungers COO, Nick Collins said: "We enjoyed a very strong July and have seen some very good like-for-like sales across the group. In addition year-on-year sales continue to grow at a very strong rate, which is driven not just by our busy roll-out program but also by the strong performance of new sites, which is helping to drive average unit sales (and unit EBITDA) upwards."