Loungers sees potential to triple estate to 500 sites

Loungers bosses believe there is the potential to triple its UK estate to 500 sites.

The company, which has 161 sites under its Lounges and Cosy Club brands, said it would continue to aim for 25 openings a year in a financial update for the 24-weeks to 6 October 2019.

Nick Collins, CEO, told The Caterer: "We have 133 Lounges and 28 Cosy Clubs and we see there being scope for at least 400 Lounges and 100 Cosy Clubs. Over the last five years an awful lot of work has been done to understand the potential scale of both brands and every time we open in a location that pushes the boundaries in terms of population size and we trade well there it gives us real confidence in terms of how big the business can ultimately be."

"The customer is always obviously the most important thing and just looking at it from a menu perspective we’re not wedded to any particular cuisine and we’re always looking to evolve what we do from a food and drink perspective. That constant evolution keeps it very interesting for the customers,. From a hospitality perspective we’re always striving to make sure we’re delivering as well as we can. That’s more important than opening 25 sites a year."

Revenue in the 24-weeks to 6 October 2019 hit £79.8m, up from £65.4m the previous year. The company increased its profit margin from 40.6% in 2018 to 41.5% in 2019, which Collins attributed to benefits of expansion, with earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization seeing an uptick to £14.6m, compared to 11.6m the previous year.

Pre-tax losses shrunk from £4.3m in the 2018 period to £2.5m for the 24-weeks in 2019. Earlier this year the group was admitted to AIM in a move that raised £83.3m.

Collins added: “I am delighted to announce another strong set of results which continue to highlight our consistent outperformance against the market. This will be the fifth consecutive year we have opened at least 20 new sites and we remain excited by the prospects and potential for both our Lounge and Cosy Club formats and the significant opportunity we have ahead of us.

“We have delivered sector leading like for like sales growth of 5.4% alongside a 0.4% improvement in our EBITDA margin. This has been achieved alongside opening 10 new sites in H1, delivering impressive overall sales growth of 22% and successfully listing the business on AIM."