Abokado, the London-based chain of healthy food bars run by Mark Lilley, saw like-for-like sales running in the mid-teens in both December and January across its 23-strong estate, M&C Report understands.
The group, which is due to open its next site in the capital in April, with a further two units under offer, said it also achieved record opening sales at its new Old Street site.
Lilley said: “With this opening we’ve entered unchartered waters. It’s delivered our highest ever opening sales. We’ve absolutely smashed it. Our trading is twice what we budgeted. We’ve introduced a second generation design into this store - a design that will carry us through the next 10 years.
“And it looks like it’s been extremely well received. We’re especially pleased with this performance as we have another store less than 500m away.”
Lilley said that the business as a whole was performing “extremely well”.
Last year, he said that the company had lined up a pipeline of sites to reach 30 by spring 2015 before looking to expand nationwide in the next 18 months.
“The market in London is growing and we have not even started growing nationwide yet because we have not yet needed to. We thought if we could keep growing in central London where we know and it’s a lower risk then why venture into cities that are an unknown?” Lilley said.
