Loungers, the Bristol-based all-day café/bar operator, has set out its openings programme for the first half of this year, as it secures its first Cosy Club site in Birmingham.
The company will open up to seven Lounge sites plus a Cosy Cub in Manchester’s Corn Exchange.
On securing the home of the original Midland Bank branch in Birmingham’s Bennetts Hill, vice chairman Alex Reilley told M&C Report: “Our Birmingham Cosy Club with be housed within a truly spectacular, very large former banking hall and will include 2 private rooms. We secured the site following some significant competition and the immediate area around where we’ll be opening is developing into a rather nice little cluster of restaurants and bars.
“Including our Lounge opening in Sutton Coldfield next week the Birmingham Cosy Club will be our 6th opening in the city and it’s unlikely we’ll stop there - Birmingham is really beginning to ‘happen’.”
The group will open Valeroso Lounge in Trowbridge on 11 February in the St Stephens Place scheme, alongside Prezzo, Frankie & Benny’s, Chiquitos, Dean’s Diner and Nando’s.
It will follow this with the opening of Maritimo Lounge in Admirals Quay, Southampton on 25 February. The company be the first to open in the scheme. Maritimo is a 4,700sq ft site with a 2,000sq ft south-west facing terrace.
Other secured sites that will open in the first half of this year include: Lounges in Bishops Stortford, Frome, Cirencester, Falmouth and Clevedon.
The company is targeting 20 openings this year, with most of the sites already secured.
Earlier this month, new managing director Nick Collins said: “The pipeline beyond 2015 looking very encouraging, and with the overall potential for in excess of 350 Lounges and 70 Cosy Clubs in the UK.”
