Loungers will today open its 100th Lounge site (see news story below) and set out plans for further growth. Co-founders Alex Reilley and Jake Bishop each give their take to MCA on what it feels like to reach that mark, 16 years after they opened their first Lounge in Bedminster High Street.
Bishop says: “After maxing out my credit card to buy cutlery on the opening morning of the very first Lounge to the very first customer that walked in and ordered a cappuccino as we were still setting up. (I said ‘sure, take a seat’ and then realised we hadn’t yet received the milk delivery). I’ve pretty much always had that feeling of perpetually getting ready for what’s next.
“A freezing bonfire night a few years later immersed in multi-site ops management, stood on the roof of the leaking kitchen below in a remote community hub in Wales (watching the fireworks) customers still coming in and my phone ringing off the hook, the constant push of growth was still very much there.
From ops management to ops director, proud of a burgeoning ops team who grew 60 odd sites, to Cosy Club MD and then Commercial Director, a couple of PE deals to boot, the changes that growth and scale present have been always been looming at the forefront of the job. Of course by this point you’ve got hundreds, thousands of amazingly characterful and skilled people on the Loungers Bus and it’s those Loungers who make it all happen, my most sincere thanks to them and their one Loungers requirement – a good days graft.
“Which affords me a moment to reflect on the journey and the opening of our 100th Lounge. It’s f**king amazing, and with the great people and laser focus that’s currently in the business I’m looking forward to being chased by growth for the next 100.”
Reilley says: “Sixteen years ago the three Loungers co-founders (myself, Jake and Dave (Reid)) sat in Dave’s dinning room desperately trying to make the business plan we were due to submit to the bank show a profit. Having sufficiently fudged the numbers we also allowed ourselves to dream beyond the 10-table, single site we planned to open (with the help of a £20k bank loan we were trying to secure) and talked about maybe having more than one site. We targeted having three sites in five years”.
“Fast forward to 2018 and we have 100 Lounges (& 121 sites overall) and have 3,000 people riding on the ‘Loungers bus’. Under Nick’s (Collins, chief executive) immense leadership we’ve assembled a best-in-class management team and our culture has never been stronger and this is the reason we’ve reached this point and why there’s so much more to come. On Wednesday we’ll allow ourselves to pause to reflect on the utterly ridiculous achievement of having reached our 100th Lounge but we won’t stop working hard - we want to see how far we can take this and we’ll continue to enjoy every day of this remarkable journey.”
