Exclusive – Loungers’ turnover passes a record £400m, confident of improving profitability in medium term, reiterates belief in growing Lounges to 600 sites: Café bar operator Loungers has reported its turnover passed a record £400m in the year to 20 April 2025 and said it is confident of improving profitability in the medium term. The company’s turnover grew 15% during the year, from £353,486,000 in 2024 to £406,355,000. Its pre-tax profit dropped from £11,44,000 in 2024 to £3,707,000 as costs rose by almost £30m and administrative expenses went up by more than £30m. A net exceptional pre-tax charge of £7.9m was also recorded in the year (2024: nil), which the company said is not part of the group’s underlying trading activities but takeover costs, such as due diligence and external advisors, relating to its acquisition by CF Exedra Bidco in February 2025. Adjusted Ebitda (IAS17) was up 24.4% from £44,236,000 to £55,027,000 while adjusted Ebitda margin grew from 12.5% to 13.5%. There were 35 new site openings during the year (2024: 36), bringing the total estate to 291 at year end (2025: 257). Capital expenditure was £50.4m (2024: £47.2m). Chief financial officer Stephen Marshall said: “We have delivered record sales on the back of market leading revenue growth in our mature estate, strong sales performance in our newer sites and 35 new site openings. Our strong cash conversion continues to allow us to fund our growth through internally generated profits. We remain confident in our ability to deliver strong top line performance through our compelling all-day offer in our existing and new sites. Whilst the impact of the increased national living wage and national insurance contributions in April 2025 has imposed a significant additional cost burden on all hospitality businesses, we are confident we can improve profitability over the medium term. As a result, we see significant potential to continue our strong growth trajectory over the coming years. We continue to innovate on both the food and drink menus, with two menu changes a year. There continues to be a good balance to sales across the dayparts, with brunch, lunch and dinner al contributing to our sales growth. During the year, we opened another 35 sites comprising 33 Lounges, one Cosy Club and one Brightside, and also relocated one of our Lounges, Pinto Lounge in Banbury, to a larger site. We also closed one site, Castano Lounge in Ealing Broadway. Our acquisitions, design, development and build teams have again delivered sites to a fantastically high standard and we continue to benefit from a tenant friendly property market. The Lounge new openings strategy continues to see us in-fill across England and Wales in areas where we already have a strong presence, as well as continuing to nudge into new territories further north and east from our heartland in the south west. This was evidenced by a cluster of openings in the north east and Lancashire, as well as openings in Kent and Essex. The openings reflect the diversity of location types where Lounges trade, with a good mix of suburban high streets, small towns, coastal locations and mixed-use retail-leisure schemes. We smashed our individual site sales records in the year, with our new flagship Lounge in Bristol, Ritorno, achieving record Lounge weekly sales. The strength of our new site openings continues to give us real confidence in the roll-out, as well as the viability of our conservative target of at least 600 Lounges across the UK. In July 2024, we opened a beautiful Cosy Club in Sheffield, which has traded well since opening. The brand is going through an exciting period of change and elevation, and in early FY26, we unveiled our new design features in our existing Cosy Club Manchester site and in a new Cosy Club in Reading. We continue to look for new Cosy Club opportunities and anticipate opening two to three sites per year. Our first three Brightside units have now all traded for a full financial year, and a fourth Brightside unit opened on the A1 in Rutland in November 2024. We have been delighted with the customer experience, and the feedback has been consistently strong. Over the course of the year, we have learnt more about the mix of local vs tourist traffic, and our marketing strategy has evolved accordingly, including offering 'to go' options for customers who require even faster service. These continued learnings are paying off, and the brand is showing much improved sales figures.” At the year end, the group reported net assets of £160.7m (2024: £156.4m) and net cash of £13.8m. In February 2025, the group refinanced its borrowing facilities following the acquisition by CF Exedra Bidco. As a result, the previously held term loan of £20m was fully repaid. Following the acquisition, the group’s facilities consist of a £155m term loan from CF Exedra Bidco, and access to a £35m RCF facility, with all debt held by the parent company.

Propel’s sector-leading guide to the UK’s 500 largest hospitality companies now available and free to Premium Club subscribers: Propel’s sector-leading guide to the UK’s 500 largest hospitality companies is now available and free to Premium Club subscribers. The Propel 500 – 2026 report analyses the companies leading the charge in hospitality, reporting on turnover, number of sites and key staff. The 45,000-word report features exclusive analysis to provide a full understanding of the market’s dynamics, as the top companies in the sector shift position after a challenging year. Mark Wingett reviews the mergers and acquisitions changing the shape of the Top 500 as size increasingly matters. Katherine Doggrell examines the key developments in UK hotels and look into one of the sector’s brightest lights, experiential leisure, while Tim Street dissects the UK’s rapidly developing franchise market. Data expert Mark Bentley, business development director at HDI, looks at emerging growth sectors, and Meaningful Vision founder Maria Vanifatova analyses the latest trends in the quick service restaurant market. Propel 500 – 2026 is available free to Premium Club subscribers. The report is available to non-Premium Club subscribers for £595 plus VAT. A Premium Club subscription costs an annual sum of £495 plus VAT for operators and £595 plus VAT for suppliers. Companies can now have an unlimited number of people receive access to Premium Club for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or supplier. Email kai.kirkman@propelinfo.com today to sign up. 

Exclusive – Junkyard Golf Club demerges and disposes of two sites as co-founder departs, closes Camden location: Crazy golf brand Junkyard Golf Club has completed a demerger and disposed of two of its sites at the same time as co-founder Chris Legh departed the company. Junkyard Golf has also closed its Camden site, which had been its most recent opening, having launched in the summer of 2023 in the former Shaka Zulu restaurant in Camden Market. The company still lists locations in Leeds, Liverpool, London, Manchester, Newcastle and Oxford on its website, and aside from Camden, all locations remain open. In its accounts for the year to 31 March 2025, the company said: “After the year end, the subsidiary Junkyard Golf Club (Camden) Limited ceased operations, and as a result, a large number of fixed assets have been impaired in the current financial statements. After the reporting date, the group completed a demerger whereby certain subsidiary undertakings ceased to be members of the group. On 6 November, the group disposed of its entire interest in the following entities, which were transferred as part of a demerger transaction: Junkyard Golf Club (London) Limited and Junkyard Golf Club (Oxford) Limited.” Legh, who co-founded Junkyard Golf with Mat Lake, James Bart Murphy, and Lyndon Higginson in 2015, resigned as a director on 6 November 2025. It comes as the company fell to a loss during the year, with a pre-tax profit of £1,879,510 in 2024 turning into a loss of £1,252,627. This followed an impairment of fixed assets loss of £2,736,602, listed under exceptional items. The company’s turnover fell from £17,807,396 in 2024 to £15,463,658. Of this, £8,425,442 came from golf (2024: £8,950,134), £6,132,199 from drink (2024: £7,275,194), £133,182 from food (2024: £152,447), £173,477 from cloakroom (2024: £212,771), £115,584 from merchandise (2024: £163,816), £114,532 from photobooth (2024: £146,833) and £59,476 from karaoke and arcade (2024: £585). Dividends of £1,039,000 were paid (2024: £1,362,000). Gross profit was 83%/£12.8m (2024: 79%/£13.6m) and wage costs 33%/£5.1m (2024: 33%/£5.6m). Lake said: “The principal risks to the business are the cost-of-living increases, compounded by a likely recession; with inflation, utility and grocery prices negatively affecting customer confidence and leisure spend. Business stock and energy costs have also increased. The directors feel the business is broadly insulated from these risks due to existing energy contracts and a pre-existing commitment to providing areal living wage, which have been factored into current forecasts. The business model offers a low spend per head activity that historically has been protected by its key demographic. This sentiment is borne out through market data and was proven to be the case through difficult covid-related trading periods.”

High streets need help too, Labour MPs tell Rachel Reeves: Rachel Reeves is facing pressure from Labour MPs to widen a business-rates bailout for pubs to hotels, restaurants and the high street. The chancellor has been urged to protect hospitality businesses, some of which face even steeper increases than pubs, from changes set to come into force a month before local elections in England. Ministers were this week examining financial support for pubs, which face an average business rates rise of 76% by 2030. Chris Webb, the Labour MP for Blackpool South, told The Times: “We know that a reduction and support for business rates is a quick way of supporting them, getting more money into these local businesses so they can hire more staff, expand and invest. But we can’t limit support to one area of hospitality. We’ve got to look at the wider sector to improve our high streets. Ministers have been engaging with me on this subject and I’m optimistic that we will see some positive change.” Rachael Maskell, Labour MP for York Central, said: “The pub sector has a strong lobby so clearly has been able to launch a campaign on business rates, but the impact on hotels, leisure and retail must not be lost in the debate. Mitigation must be found to ensure that no business is put at risk, and cumulative impact of revaluation, the application of the multiplier and relief reduction keeps businesses on our high streets. I welcome government listening to MPs and trust that we will be able to find the right solutions to this challenge, like pausing the application of the revaluation, and focusing on businesses with the least resilience after a difficult few years for the sector.” Anna Turley, the Labour Party chair, denied Reeves had been forced to backtrack after the threat of MPs seeking to amend a finance bill, due to be debated in the Commons next Monday. She told Sky News: “I don’t buy this is a U-turn. This is actually about listening. I think it’s a sign of a government that is actually in touch with people, that is listening to people, and that is responding. I think listening to constituents isn’t being bullied or lobbied. That’s what we’re here to do. We’re here to represent the people that we live among and, if a policy isn’t right, I think it’s a sign of a confident government that says, ‘Do you know what? We’ll step in, we’ll sort it out, we’ll make sure it works.’” She declined to say whether other sectors of hospitality would get similar protections to pubs. Andrew Griffith, the shadow business secretary, said the U-turn should go “much wider” than just pubs. “Businesses are bleeding out across our high streets,” he said. “When you present yourself in A&E with blood gushing, you don’t want someone to throw you a pack of plasters. It’s got to be a substantial change to the chancellor’s budget. This was a measure that she should never have introduced in this way. It just shows how they don’t understand business.”

Pep Guardiola’s Manchester restaurant Tast shuts down with £2m losses: The high-end restaurant co-owned by Pep Guardiola and Manchester City’s chief executive Ferran Soriano has shut down seven years after it opened its doors, citing “exceptionally challenging trading conditions and increased costs”, with losses totalling nearly £2m. The Times reports that Tast restaurant in Manchester served classy Catalan food and was the place where City’s manager, executives and Erling Haaland celebrated the signing of the Norway striker in 2022. Txiki Begiristain, another member of the Catalan clan at City until he stepped down as director of football last season, was also a co-owner. Soriano was the only one of the City trio who was a director of the company that ran the restaurant, Tast Group, but the other two are understood to have been investors. The company’s latest accounts are nearly two years old but indicated the restaurant had financial issues. Kieran Maguire, the football finance author at the University of Liverpool, said: “It looks as if the Tast Group lost slightly over £200,000 in 2023-24, taking total losses to nearly £1.9m. The only way the restaurant was able to continue was the investments put in by shareholders with fresh issues of shares, but evidently, they have made the decision to close down. It is a shame because I have eaten there and it was very nice food, though quite pricey.” In a farewell message to customers, Tast said: “We are proud to have been able to share some of Catalunya, our beloved country, with the people of Manchester.”