Christian Rose, managing director of boutique bowling company All Star Lanes, has told M&C the company will report ‘substantial’ EBITDA growth this year as it prepares for expansion.
Rose said the restructuring of the company, including the recent appointments of a financial director and a head of marketing, was now largely complete and he was currently negotiating on two sites – one in London and two in the regions.
He said trading in the first half of the year had been strong but said the Paris terror attacks had impacted trade. He said December had started strong with the expectation that sales would be up 7%.
Rose, who joined the currently five-strong chain in January, said a revamp of the menu had driven sales and that the company was well advanced on its new website, which will introduce online booking for the first time.
He told M&C: “We’re going to be ahead of budgeted profit and sales started off very strong the first half of the year. We had a bit of a tough summer and we have found that the Paris attacks have impacted on people’s confidence.
“There is definitely a feeling that people’s confidence has been dented. Everyone is still going out to work but there has definitely been an effect on how much time people are spending out. The week after we had so many cancellations.
“The Rugby World Cup impacted us a bit as well but now we are into the Christmas season proper we are seeing good sales growth.
“We reckon Christmas will be up about 7%. Our financial year ends on 31 December and it is looking like we are going to smash our EBITDA figure. Last year we posted £840k. We are going to see substantial growth in that.”
On plans for 2016, he said: “What I want to do is take the business forward to become even more posh bowling with a real focus on cocktails and food. Bowling will always be integral to the offer but I want us to get to appoint where we are equally as famous for our food and drink offer as the bowling. It’s about the experience.
“We’ve got a couple of sites that we are negotiating hard. One in London, two in provincial cities. I want to open at least one if not two sites next year.
“We are looking at external funding and we are quite a long way down the track with that. It’s going to be part cashflow and partly debt as opposed to equity.”
At the last board meeting board meeting Mike Evans was appointed finance director having been with the company for the past six months. Jenny Fine has also recently been appointed head of marketing.
Rose said the last major role to be filled within the company was head of the fledgling business development team, which he said he expected to be an internal appointment.
