Hummus Bros launches £125,000 crowdfunding campaign for expansion: Hummus Bros, the London-based hummus restaurant chain, has launched a £125,000 fund-raise on crowdfunding platform Seedrs to support its expansion plans. The company, founded by Christian Mouysset, is running a convertible share equity campaign with a 25% discount. It currently operates six high-street sites and 40 pop-ups a month in canteens of large offices such as Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley. The pitch states: “Over the past few years we have observed the popularity of Mediterranean food, and hummus in particular, increase significantly. We have been making our food available by first opening high-street restaurants and more recently directly in canteens of large offices around London. We are now looking to make our hummus available in supermarkets. In 2016 we turned over £2.59m from our six restaurant locations, pop-ups in corporate restaurants and deliveries to offices around London. These all operate predominately on weekdays at lunchtime. We are looking to continue innovating with new products and how these are delivered to our customers to increase the revenue from all our current channels. We hope to increase our turnover over the next 12 months by opening one or two more high-street locations and increasing the number of pop-ups we operate. We have opened six branches over the past ten years, which have cost as low as £75,000 to acquire and refurbish (depending on the size of unit and rent). We would expect to use up to £125,000 of the proceeds to open one more branch. The maximum we will seek is £500,000, in which case we will open up to four more branches (£400,000) and move forwards with a launch of Hummus Bros-branded products in supermarkets. The business currently has a £25,000 bank loan as well as a £176,000 bond repayable in 2020. None of the funds raised will be used to repay these debts.”

Loungers reports like-for-likes up 5.8%, eyes 200-venue milestone in ‘four to five years’: Cafe bar brand Loungers, which is backed by Lion Capital, has reported a 5.8% increase in like-for-likes sales during the 12 weeks to the week ending 5 March. The company will open its 100th site, in May, with plans to hit the 200-venue milestone in “four to five years”. It recently opened its 17th Cosy Club, in Cheltenham, and 79th Lounge, in Poole. An 18th Cosy Club will open in York next month along with further Lounge openings in Weston-super-Mare, also in March, and Kidderminster in April. The 100th site will be the Capo Lounge, which will launch in Mansfield on Wednesday, 10 May. The Cosy Club in Cheltenham opened in a 5,500 square foot space in the newly built extension to the Brewery Quarter in the town following a £750,000 investment. Delfino Lounge opened on Wednesday (8 March) in Poole’s Dolphin Square shopping centre following a £550,000 investment and is Loungers’ fifth site in the region. Loungers chief executive Nick Collins said: “The business continues to enjoy robust like-for-like sales, which against the backdrop of growing at a rate of 20-plus sites a year is extremely pleasing. We’ve got a fully formed pipeline of sites for both brands that takes us well into 2018 and, while reaching the milestone of 100 sites in May will mark a huge achievement for the business, we are already focused on reaching 200 sites in four to five years time.”