Christian Rose, managing director at All Star Lanes, has told M&C Report a ‘root and branch’ review of the whole business will proceed a growth strategy of adding two to three sites a year.
Rose said his strategy for growing the business had been accepted and he was in the process of building the structure to facilitate it, with a raft of key appointments in the last few weeks.
He said the focus would be on building trade across day parts by introducing children’s parties and marketing the venues to the business community. Around £400k will be spent refurbishing the venues, with alternative entertainment streams such as karaoke, arcade games and wii bowling introduced. The food and drink offer will also be revamped, Rose said.
Once the company has refreshed its existing estate it will look to grow.
Rose said: “We are looking for two or three sites in 2016 with another two or three sites every year going forward. That will be both in London – we have a couple of sites we are reviewing - and other cities. We have one in Manchester, which has taken a while to get going but now that people are aware of us we are developing a real following up there.
“We will be looking at Leeds, Birmingham, Liverpool with a bigger style site and then ultimately some of the more affluent market towns for a smaller scale operation.”
Rose said international expansion was still an area of interest for the company but insisted the company needed to be a “well-oiled machine” in the UK before that became a priority.
He said early trading in 2015 had been positive.
He said: “We are seeing double-digit like-for-like growth for our first quarter. We had an amazing Easter. Good Friday week was up 26% year on year. We started early in promoting to people and we did the same for Valentine’s Day which was 14% up and Mother’s Day where there was a 16% increase.”
Recent appointments have included Rebecca Smith, who was brought in as the company’s first head of HR, from RLL Cruise Company. Victoria Searle, formerly director of marketing for Café Rouge at Casual Dining Group, has joined on an interim basis to lead the marketing function. New head of operations, Mike Perry, joined this week from Revolution Bars.
Rose said he was also look for a head of business development to promote the venues as ideal locations for meetings, workshops or product launches. He said the aim was to eventually have that role supported by sales advisors in each venue.
