Tue 5th Aug 2014 - Loungers hits 50 site milestone, sales up 47.7% Loungers hits 50 site milestone, sales up 47.7%: Loungers, the Bristol based café/bar group, will reach 50 sites with the opening of Como Lounge in Witney, Oxfordshire tomorrow (Wednesday). Loungers started life in 2002 as a ten-table café/bar in the Southville suburb of Bristol and initially grew fairly slowly, only reaching double-figures of sites in 2009. However since then the group has expanded at an ever-increasingly rapid rate and has over doubled in size the last two years and looks well set to reach 90+ sites by 2017. Split over two floors the Witney site is located in former nightclub premises in the centre of the Oxfordshire town and at nearly 6,000 sq ft is one of the groups’ largest sites. 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, which added sites in the Birmingham suburb of Shirley (Desco Lounge) and Torquay (Visto Lounge) in July is set to add further Lounge sites this year in Kettering, Letchworth Garden City, Keynsham, Stroud, and Peterborough as well as opening their eighth Cosy Club site in Leicester in October. Speaking of the milestone of reaching 50 sites Loungers managing director 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 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.” 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 chief operating officer 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.”