Loungers to create female-friendly Cosy Club brand
Bar and casual-dining operator Loungers is to target market towns and a female clientele by creating a new "hybrid" brand of outlets called Cosy Club.
The news came as Alex Reilley, managing director of Loungers, which currently has 13 lounges mostly in the South-west and Wales and an annualised turnover of around £8m, revealed the company would accelerate its growth to as many as 40 sites by the end of 2013. Between eight and 12 of those are expected to be Cosy Clubs.
Loungers, which directly employs its own fit-out team and has adopted a strategy of converting unlicensed retail properties, is set to reach 18 venues by the end of this year and 25 by the end of 2011, having originally set out a plan of opening 30 sites by 2013.
Its first Cosy Club will open in Taunton, Somerset, after the firm completed a deal last week to take on the Grade II-listed Hunt's Court - a former arts college.
Reilley said that Loungers had come up with a "hybrid brand" for the new venue because of concerns that the more urban Loungers concept would not be so well received in market towns. "The concern has been in a town like Taunton that they probably don't want an urbanised look - they want a good product but in different packaging. There is a growing uneasiness about identikit chain businesses," he said.
The concept is expected to allow Loungers to continue exploiting opportunities in the South-west, as well as in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Hertfordshire, rather than spreading further north.
"We want to take all of the really good regional opportunities before we open out further - a lot of groups get very carried away when they expand," Reilley added.
Meanwhile, pub company Flatcappers, in which Loungers holds a 40% stake, acquired a third site last week - the Battleaxes in Wraxall, Somerset, close to the famous Victorian neo-Gothic Tyntesfield estate. The food-led pub is now set to close for refurbishment until late summer.
"We are aiming for Flatcappers to be a similar size to Loungers eventually," Reilley said. "The food offering is similar. But we really don't like the term gastropub. We feel it is overly used in the provinces as a term for a restaurant shoehorned into a pub, where you can't just go for a pint."
By Neil Gerrard
E-mail your comments to Neil Gerrard here.
Caterersearch.com jobs
Looking for a new job? Find your next restaurant job here with Caterersearch.com jobs
|
