Abokado, the London-based chain of healthy food bars, has secured £2.6m of funding to accelerate its growth plans.
The funding, from the Royal Bank of Scotland, comes as it announced “another year of strong growth” to 31 March, with a 33% increase in sales, 45% growth in gross profit and a doubling of adjusted EBITDA.
Turnover increased to £10.8m from £8.1m, gross profit margin was up from 35% to 39% and adjusted EBITDA grew 100% to approximately £600,000.
The company said sales growth was driven by continued positive like for like sales, the maturing of the company’s more recent store openings and the addition of three new stores. These took the estate to 23 and built on the seven stores opened in the prior year.
Mark Lilley, founder, said: “We had another strong year and are pleased with the company’s performance across our financial and non-financial KPIs. Our Net Promoter Score hit a record 73%.’
“Trading since the year end has remained strong, with continued positive LFLs and an increase in store and company EBITDA. We’ve opened two new stores and the leases on further stores have been signed or are under offer. We also created the position of operations director and welcomed Richard Zivkovic, previously of Pret A Manger, Costa and Be At One to the management team and Board.’
“We’re also pleased to announce that in July 2015 the company secured £2.6m of funding from RBS. This gives us the fire power to accelerate our growth over the coming years. Our vision remains to help people live happier and healthier lives by making our Feel Great Food as accessible as possible.”
