Deltic Group chief executive Peter Marks has told MCA he sees the potential for the Bar & Beyond format to grow to between 20 and 30 sites.
He said he expected a further two or three iterations of the currently five-strong bar/club hybrid to open this financial year, with the focus for the moment being on the former Chicago Leisure sites.
He said the group was also alive to opportunities for acquisitions for both Bar & Beyond and the core club business.
Alongside Bar & Beyond, Deltic is focussing on opening Steinbeck & Shaw bars in existing clubs, with Brighton’s Pryzm among those being lined up.
Marks said that the recent spate of terror attacks would inevitably impact on consumer confidence in eating and drinking out but said there was also signs of a “spirit of defiance”. He said Deltic would doing a dry run of its crisis response systems in the coming weeks.
Marks was speaking to MCA following the announcement of the group’s full-year results, in which turnover grew slightly from £101m to £102m and like-for-like sales were up 1.7% but underlying EBITDA fell from £13.4m to £11.5m. Spend per head, excluding VAT, fell by 80p to £14.09.
Marks said that the group’s move into evening trade had seen volumes increasing but spend per head down slightly but insisted that the group was focussed on optimising its business for the future.
He said: “We are facing headwinds and it would be all too easy to use that as excuse to retreat into our shell but we intend to keep investing in our estate because it is the right thing to do. The big focus over the next year is to continue that rolling investment that has been core to our strategy from the beginning.”
On acquisitions, he said: “We want to continue to grow and we will do so on an opportunistic basis but the main thing is to ensure the clubs we run are well-invested. When opportunities like Birmingham (the former Gatecrasher site) come up then we are in a position to act, but the reality is that we probably had to put four or five refurbs on ice because of that acquisition.”
On Bar & Beyond, he said: “We are at five now and we are learning about them all the time. I can certainly see the scope for 20 to 30 of them across the country if we can identify the right locations.”
On the impact of the terror threat, he said: “We saw with the Bataclan attack in Paris that the London scene was affected by that but it didn’t really spread across the country. Now we have had three attacks in as many months in the UK so undoubtedly people’s confidence is going to be shaken. You saw at the concert in Manchester and generally in what people say, that there is a spirit of defying the terrorists and not letting them stop us enjoying ourselves. All we can do is focus on the job at hand.
“In terms of our security, as you would expect we have robust crisis systems in place. We are going to do a dry run to ensure that everything is running as smoothly as possible.”
