Propel Newsletter Archive Page

Flight Club operator sees sales exceed £100m, likely to fundraise towards end of 2024: Red Engine, the team behind Flight Club and Electric Shuffle, saw sales rise to more than £100m in 2023 as the popularity of “competitive socialising” continues to grow. Sales at Red Engine rose by 28% compared with 2022, while like-for-like revenue grew by 10%, reports The Times. Red Engine, which opened its first site in Shoreditch, east London in 2015, now has 25 venues, ten of which are operated by franchise partners. Flight Club is a drinks and food venue combined with a spin-off of darts, providing fast and simple group games based loosely on the sport. Electric Shuffle does something similar with shuffleboard, a game in which players shuffle pucks along a table aiming at a marked scoring area. As previously reported, the group plans to open eight more venues in 2024, including in New York, Philadelphia and Washington in the United States. Co-founder and chief executive Steve Moore told The Times the sites were proving to be a “jewel in a tough market”. He said: “In Shoreditch, the waiting list to play can be months, but people are coming just to eat and drink. Our site in Glasgow has been our best-performing ever. It’s proving popular in so many places, from Cheltenham to Las Vegas.” Excluding franchise venues, Red Engine’s sales reached £67m, producing Ebitda of £12.2m. Moore said the company was likely to pursue a fundraising round towards the end of this year. Moore said there was a squeezed middle in the hospitality market. “If you’re a shabby little café or at the other end doing something exceptional, you’re probably doing well,” he added. “It’s the mid-market that is dying. What we saw a few years ago in middle-market dining is happening in bars now as well.” Flight Club is based around a camera-based “vision” system that tracks darts as players throw them, scores them and instantly displays results and action replays on a large screen next to the board. The technology was developed by Jason Dale, a computer vision expert who previously had worked on a Nasa project to develop autonomous in-flight refuelling systems. Earlier this month, Red Engine reported a milestone of 500 million darts thrown at its UK Flight Club venues since launching.

Premium Club members to receive updated New Openings Database on Friday featuring 64 openings: Premium Club members will receive the updated The New Openings Database on Friday (1 March), at midday. The database will show the details of 64 site openings, including which company has opened a site or its plans to open one in the future. It will have details on what type of site it is and its location, and there will also be a website link to the businesses. The database is published on a monthly basis and Premium Club members will also receive a 2,800-word report on the new additions to the database. Premium members also receive access to five other databases: The Multi-Site Database, produced in association with Virgate; the Turnover & Profits Blue Book; the UK Food and Beverage Franchisor Database; the UK Food and Beverage Franchisee Database and the Who’s Who of UK Hospitality. All subscribers will be offered a 20% discount on tickets to five Propel paid-for events – The Excellence in Pub Retailing Conference (14 May), Social Media for Profit (18 July), the Talent and Training Conference (1 October) and Restaurant Marketer and Innovator (two days in January 2025). Operators will also be able to send up to four members of staff to each of our four Multi-Club Conferences for free. Premium Club members receive their daily Propel Info newsletter 11 hours earlier than standard subscribers, at 7pm the evening before. They also receive videos of presentations at eight Propel conference events two weeks after they are held. This represents around 100 videos of industry insight over the course of the year. Premium Club members will be sent a dedicated monthly newsletter that will highlight key updates in the sector and direct subscribers to all the vital content their membership offers. Premium Club members also receive exclusive opinion columns every Friday at 5pm, which include the thoughts of Propel group editor Mark Wingett and a host of industry leaders from across the sector. A Propel Premium 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 Propel Premium for a year for £995 plus VAT – whether they are an operator or a supplier. Email kai.kirkman@propelinfo.com today to sign up.

‘Tourist tax’ won’t be reversed in spring Budget: Business leaders’ hopes of a U-turn on the “tourist tax” in next week’s budget are diminishing after the financial secretary to the Treasury warned of the complexities of such a move. Nigel Huddleston, the minister responsible for the tax system, said in correspondence seen by The Times that it was “not possible to introduce the same system as before, given that it would now need to be open to visitors from the EU as well as the rest of the world”. He added any new scheme, no matter the design, “would take time to legislate for and implement in order to prevent non-compliance risks and ensure operation”. In a letter sent to one of the leaders of the tourist tax campaign, Huddleston said that “the chancellor has been clear that being responsible with the public finances is a key priority”. He added a new VAT-free shopping scheme “could subsidise a large amount of tourist spending that already occurs without a tax relief in place, without bringing any direct benefits to the British public”. The tax-free shopping scheme, which allowed international shoppers to reclaim 20% VAT on purchases, was axed by Rishi Sunak when he was chancellor in 2021. Jeremy Hunt, the present chancellor, ordered a review into the scheme, according to reports this month, after hundreds of calls from business leaders for its reversal, fuelling speculation that the Treasury was considering reversing the policy. However, an insider said the “Treasury’s position still stands, in that it has no plan to reintroduce tax-free shopping”. Huddleston was responding to a letter to the chancellor from Sacha Zackariya, the chief executive of ChangeGroup and Prosegur Change, a British-based retail foreign exchange and bureau de change company, urging him to reinstate the scheme immediately. Sir Rocco Forte, the hotelier who organised an open letter to the chancellor calling for the reintroduction of tax-free shopping that was signed by 400 business leaders, said: “We have always known that the government would have to legislate to reintroduce tax-free shopping and extend it to a new market of 500 million EU shoppers now that we have left the EU, as well as the rest of the world. This isn’t an obstacle but an enormous Brexit opportunity. Only secondary legislation that could be passed quickly would be required.”

Sector kitchen equipment supplier Nisbets to be acquired by distributor Bunzl in £500m deal: Nisbets, a multi-national distributor to the foodservice sector, has announced Bunzl will acquire a majority stake in the company in a deal that values Nisbets at an equity value in excess of £500m. Bunzl supplies a broad range of internationally and responsibly sourced non-food products to a variety of market sectors in more than 30 countries. Nisbets supplies professional kitchen equipment to restaurants, hotels, bars, and the hospitality industry generally, and the deal will support the existing Nisbets management team to deliver the next phase of growth. Established more than 40 years ago, Nisbets has 25 retail outlets in the UK, 11 in Australia and one retail outlet in the Republic of Ireland, as well as offices in UK, Ireland, Holland, France, Australia, New Zealand, China and India. Peter Sephton will remain chairman and chief executive, with Andrew Nisbet, the company’s founder, serving as a non-executive director on the Nisbets advisory board within Bunzl. The Nisbets leadership team will remain in place and it is expected that Nisbets will continue to operate separately from Bunzl. The stake has been sold by Key West Holdings, which holds the Nisbet family’s business interests. Sephton said: “Based on our extensive engagement with Bunzl over the past months, it became clear that both parties have a shared vision and a commitment to customers and colleagues that will build on Nisbets’ heritage and growth strategy. The acquisition will help drive our strategy for growth by bringing both strategic and operational value to Nisbets. We are looking forward to working together to execute this strategy and to delivering the next phase of growth.”