Loungers co-founder Jake Bishop talks to James Wallin about what the future holds for Cosy Club, why the brand is able to outpace the competition and explains the Loungers version of top trumps.
If there is one word that seems to sum up Jake Bishop and the business empire he has helped build it would be ‘crikey’.
During breakfast at Derby’s Cosy Club – the latest opening for the brand – Bishop utters the word more times than I believe I have ever heard it in my life (Dangermouse episodes aside). It reinforces the aura Bishop exudes of being a thoroughly decent chap and also characterises the intrinsic unflashy Englishness of Loungers – the business he co-founded with Alex Reilley and Dave Reid in 2002.
From its first opening in Bristol, Loungers has grown to an estate fast approaching 100 venues by choosing locations into which many of its perceived competitors would never dream of setting foot. Earlier this year, when Hawksmoor announced it would open in the reimagined World Trade Center in New York, Reilley cheerily responded on Twitter with a reference to
the company’s upcoming launch in Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshire.
Bishop says: “We’ve got to the point where we can play top trumps with A-road destinations. I was driving around the East Midlands the other day and looking at the signposts thinking – yep, got that one and that one. We wouldn’t do so well with motorway signs but that’s where we’ve carved our niche.”
Offer is proved to work
Over the years, the industry has cottoned on to the fact that Loungers was doing something right and Bishop rolls his eyes when asked whether rival brands now suddenly pop up after the group has put those A-road destinations on the circuit. While the proposition is very different, the unconventional approach to site selection and its innovation in creating its own corner of the market bares comparison with JD Wetherspoon.
Having generally sat in the shadow of its rambunctious sister brand, Lounge (now at more than 70 sites) since its launch in 2008, Cosy Club is now very much primed for growth. To facilitate this, Bishop moved from group operations director to Cosy Club managing director in June.
He says: “We are now up to 14 sites and clearly it’s got legs. We’ve proved the offer works in different environments and locations. People get the sense of occasion. It’s doing well on all the financial metrics – turnover, EBITDA, etc, so it was an obvious time to move up a gear.
“There are key growth points on the way. We call it seven, 17 and 70; in terms of landmark openings. Having been through that with Lounges, it seemed an obvious fit for Cosy Club on the same trajectory.”
The next opening for Cosy Club will be in Ipswich’s Buttermarket shopping centre in mid August and Bishop says he expects one more opening before Christmas then in the first six months of 2017 new sites in York, Cheltenham, Worcester, Chelmsford and one other location.
Brands can co-exist
Bishop insists the two core brands can co-exist and points from the window of the Derby venue at the Carnero Lounge opened the previous night 50 yards down the road.
He says: “People instinctively get the difference between the two. It’s home from home versus the sense of something special. The design of a Cosy Club inspires people to get their glad rags on, whereas a Lounge is very much shorts and flip flops.”
In the same way that Lounge blazed a trail of utilising former Blockbuster and Woolworth’s stores, Cosy Club has identified its own unique buying point, focused around cavernous first floor spaces – generally with a small entrance area on the ground floor. Fit-out spends tend to be in excess of Lounges at £850,000 to £1m compared to £450,000 to £650,000.
Bishop says the Cosy Club offer has evolved steadily since it launched in Taunton with a progressive move away from the core elements of Lounge.
“We’ve tried to make the two concepts move apart in terms of the offer. That’s challenging because when you have a successful, well-established concept like Lounge, it’s natural to want to transplant what’s successful there to the smaller concept.”
So, if the brands have diverged sufficiently and are not competing against each other, who is trying to eat Cosy Club’s lunch?
Bishop says: “If you had asked the question four or five years ago, I definitely would have said it was the big name casual-dining players – the PizzaExpresses and Zizzis of this world. Now, we pretty much sit in our corner of the market because there are very few operators who have convinced customers that they are a truly all-day proposition.
“This has become a real focus for the industry over the past few years – you’ve got Wetherspoon’s having a big push on breakfast, and coffee shops going the other way and trying to develop an evening trade. But I think it’s hard for brands when they have established themselves as one thing to reinvent that offer successfully. Whereas Cosy Club has never been about doing one particular thing but is very good at advertising all the things it can do.”
Scale is limitless
On the ultimate potential for the Cosy Club brand, Bishop says: “People talk about putting us in the same pigeonhole as Bill’s or Côte – so in the 50 to 70 sites bracket. I don’t see that. Because of the kind of areas we are going to, the sort of buildings and layouts we look at and the offer that has been accepted by the public, it really broadens our scope. One of my key drivers is to allow Cosy Club to follow in the footsteps of Lounge but with a different identity. So scale is limitless. It’s not just – ‘we’ve checked off the top 50 towns and cities in the UK, what shall we do now – let’s open in Dubai’. There is so much potential across the UK.
“We’re not interested in any spin-offs. We’re not going to be doing Deliveroo, we don’t get involved in festivals. We are just focused on being the best at what we do and that makes expansion really exciting.”
Asked how he sees his role now he has moved from a purely operations-focused role to that of managing director, Bishop says: “Our culture is very important to us and, as you get bigger, it becomes more of a challenge to hold on to that. I see that as a key role – galvanising our culture, nurturing our people and continuing to innovate in our offer.”
All this, and the small matter of outpacing fellow industry darlings such as Bill’s and Côte. Crikey, what a challenge.
