Topgolf founders’ new Poolhouse concept secures $34m of funding, gears up for London launch: The founders of Topgolf and World Golf Systems have secured $34m (£25.9m) of funding to launch their new competitive socialising concept called Poolhouse. Propel revealed last September that the Jolliffe brothers, who also co-founded Puttshack with Adam Breeden, co-founder of Flight Club, AceBounce and All Star Lanes, had lined up a site in the City of London, for the first site under the new concept, across the ground and first floor of 90 Liverpool Street. The business has now secured backing for the new bar-restaurant entertainment concept from a slate of high-profile investors. Danzig and Sharp Alpha – an investment firm specialising in competitive entertainment including sports – are joined in the $34m seed investment by 76ers and Devils co-owner David Blitzer, Ipswich Town FC co-owner Simon Sports, Active Partners and Emerging Fund, a $100m investment fund focused on sports-themed restaurants. In addition, Australia’s Signature Hospitality Group has taken an equity stake and signed a franchise agreement with Poolhouse. Poolhouse is the result of four years of development by the Jolliffe brothers, built around interactive games available on a pool table. According to Emerging Fund’s Mathew Focht, the technology uses projection mapping on a regular pool table to offer any number of games. Pool matches can also include handicapping ability to level the competition between a more-skilled and less-skilled player. “If you’re playing a game and one player is making all the shots while you’re missing, an algorithm kicks in and gives you opportunities to score more points … and makes it competitive,” Focht told US magazine Sportico. “It transforms the game of pool to broad market appeal.” The first site in Liverpool Street will be a 21,500 sq ft venue with a drink menu curated by the Venning brothers, known for London bars Three Sheets. An as-yet unnamed former Gordon Ramsey Group executive chef will be leading the food side of the house. Andrew O’Brien, a former Credit Suisse banker and a current board member of F1 Arcade, is chief executive of Poolhouse, and, as previously reported by Propel, Matt Fleming, formerly of Be At One and Vagabond Wines, is its chief operating officer. The company plans to franchise the Poolhouse bar-restaurant globally and will license its game technology to other hospitality operators. Poolhouse said it is already in discussions with operators in the Middle East, North America, Europe and Southeast Asia. It plans to sell its equipment to pubs, bars, casinos and hotels, so that these venues can recreate the Poolhouse experience with their existing pool tables. Lloyd Danzig, managing partner at Sharp Alpha, told the FT his firm had been attracted by the high margins from selling Poolhouse’s “white-label technology [which allows a licensee to rebrand and sell a developer’s tech as their own] that modernises any pool table into a dynamic digital-entertainment hub”.
Premium Club subscribers to receive next Who's Who of UK Hospitality on Thursday: The next Who’s Who of UK Hospitality will be released to Premium Club subscribers on Thursday (17 April), at midday. Another 24 companies have been added to the database, which now features 907 companies. This month’s edition will also include 62 updated entries. The companies, listed in alphabetical order, will have their most recent results reported as well as broader information around Ebitda, plans and trading style available. The database merges Companies House information, interviews and other public information to provide an easy to reference and exhaustive guide to the sector. Premium Club subscribers also receive access to five other databases: the
Multi-Site Database, the
New Openings Database, the
Turnover & Profits Blue Book, the
UK Food and Beverage Franchisor Database and the
UK Food and Beverage Franchisee Database. All Premium Club subscribers will be offered a 20% discount on tickets to Propel paid-for events including Excellence in Pub Retail (May 2025) and discounts on specialist sector reports such as the International Brands report. Operators that are Premium Club subscribers are also able to send up to four members of staff to each of our four Multi-Club Conferences for free. Premium Club subscribers 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 subscribers 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 subscribers 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 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.
UK’s oldest Indian restaurant could close in row with Crown Estate: The oldest Indian restaurant in Britain is facing the threat of closure because of what the owner says is a dispute with the King’s property company over a space not much bigger than a prison cell. Veeraswamy has been based in Victory House, just around the corner from Piccadilly Circus, since 1926. The Times reports that the building is owned by the Crown Estate and Veeraswamy’s lease expires in June. The Crown Estate told MW Eat, which owns Veeraswamy, last summer that it would not be renewing the lease. Ranjit Mathrani, co-owner of MW Eat, said the news “came out of the blue” because the previous year the estate had asked if he wanted to take more space in the building. He ultimately turned down the offer, he says, unsure if he could consistently fill the extra tables. The Crown Estate says it needs to take back the restaurant because it wants to extend the ground floor reception area for the offices on the building’s upper floors. Knocking through into Veeraswamy’s entrance area would give it an extra 11 sq metres. “I think they’ve come to the view that it’s too tiresome having a restaurant there, they want it to be all offices,” Mathrani said. He said that if the Crown Estate refused to allow the restaurant to stay put until it found a suitable alternative, “we’ll have to close down and then seek to revive it in a new site after whatever period of time with all the implications for loss of business [and] potential redundancies. The effect of what they’re doing would be to effectively destroy a major London institution… We’re open to moving, because we accept the inevitability that, sooner or later, they will be able to turf us out. Ideally, if they’re being reasonable people, we need two years to find a site [and fit it out], but that is not currently something they’re willing to do.” A spokeswoman for the Crown Estate said: “We need to carry out a comprehensive refurbishment of Victory House. This includes a major upgrade to the offices and improving the entrance to make it more accessible. Due to the limited options available in this listed building we need to remove the entrance to the restaurant, which means we will not be able to offer Veeraswamy an extension when their lease expires.”
Unesco status for real ale may not be beyond the pale: For centuries, British drinkers have enjoyed the subtle and malty flavours of cask ales. Now beer lovers are trying to have its production and serving methods formally recognised. The Times reports that a petition has been started to protect the drink, calling for the government to recognise cask ale as a Unesco “intangible cultural heritage” akin to Arabic coffee and French baguettes. The government ratified the 2003 Unesco convention for the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage only in March last year and no British products hold the status. It is symbolic rather than legal or commercial, but in practical terms, might help secure funding or government support for training in the tradition. Apprenticeships or cultural festivals, for example, could receive financial backing to help ensure the tradition survives. The petition, which was started by Jonny Garrett, who runs the Craft Beer Channel on YouTube and wrote The Meaning of Beer, has attracted 9,700 signatures. It needs 10,000 to force the government to respond. If it were to attract 100,000 signatures, it would be considered for debate in parliament. In 2016, Belgian beer culture was recognised by Unesco. Garrett said that we too often “fetishise American, Belgian and German brewing”, overlooking “our own world-famous heritage”.
