New waterfront eatery for St Ives
SOUTH West-headquartered restaurant chain Loungers is to open a venue right on the waterfront at St Ives in Cornwall as one of 25 news sites this year.
The Bristol-based company, which already operates 168 café/ bar/restaurants across England and Wales under the Lounge and Cosy Club brands, will open the Tretho Lounge in Wharf Road, in the Cornish seaside town, on May 26, 2021.
Currently advertising for staff, the St Ives branch is one of four that will be launching on that date, the others being in Wolverhampton, Stourbridge and Welwyn Garden City.
It will bring the firm’s estate to 172 sites, comprising 142 Lounges and 30 Cosy Clubs. These new sites were partially fitted out going into lockdown at the end of December 2020 and are currently being completed.
Loungers is also taking a phased approach to reopening its other venues and initially opened 47 sites in England yesterday for takeaway and external trading, and will open five sites in Wales on April 26 on the same basis, in line with the respective governments’ suggested roadmaps.
Assuming no changes to the roadmap, the company plans to reopen all its English sites by May 17, and sites in Wales later in May subject to confirmation from the Welsh government.
A statement to investors said: “We are approaching reopening with enthusiasm and optimism, encouraged by how strongly the business traded last summer and autumn.
“Our sites have been completely closed since December 30 and we have used this time well, continuing to focus on evolution within Lounge and Cosy Club, as well as undertaking targeted investment in our sites, particularly in our outside trading areas.
“We remain confident that Loungers is well-placed to emerge strongly as the country comes out of lockdown.”
The statement to the Stock Market continued: “We anticipate – and are ready to return to – a run-rate of 25 new site openings per year during the course of the year ending April 2022, assuming no further Covid interruptions.
“The pipeline of new sites is exceptionally strong and we continue to see a large number of attractive opportunities in the locations which we are targeting.”
This comes as Loungers further strengthened its financial and liquidity position and said its lending banks, Santander and Bank of Ireland, have approved a 12-month extension to the incremental £15million revolving credit facility (RCF) that was put in place in April 2020.