Cornwall-headquartered burger chain Hub Box has reported record sales of £12.6m partly thanks to the staycation boom in the South West -and is now looking to expand across the UK.
The company, which has its head office in Truro and is about to open a large new restaurant in Plymouth’s Royal William Yard, said it could expand from its current 11 outlets to more than 100.
This optimism comes after it saw its 2021 revenue increase by 75%, to £12.6m, compared to the £7.2m it earned the previous year. Its unaudited company EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortisation), a measure of profitability, rose to £1.47m, up from £539,000 in 2020. Like-for-like sales for the 33 weeks following the easing of restrictions on May 17, 2021, were up by 25.1% against 2019.
Hub Box - which counts Loungers’ co-founders Alex Reilley, who chairs the business, and Jake Bishop amongst its backers - opened two new sites in the financial year: in Falmouth in June and Cheltenham in September, and is now looking to expand beyond the South West.
In addition to Plymouth, where it is relocating from the city centre to a larger space at the Royal William Yard, it has another 10 restaurants in Truro, Falmouth, Pentewan, St Ives, Bristol, Cardiff, Cheltenham, Exeter and Portsmouth.
Richard Boon, chief executive and founder, said, “We are very pleased with how well the business has performed, particularly given that we were unable to trade our sites fully for over a third of the year,
“We used the various lockdowns well to focus on improving our proposition, being ready to make the most of when we were able to trade, and building an infrastructure fit for ambitious growth.
“Our coastal sites benefited from a very buoyant staycation market and our city centre sites also performed extremely well. Our two new openings in Falmouth and particularly Cheltenham have out-performed our expectations.
“The numbers for FY21 demonstrate how much the business has matured and give us confidence that Hub Box is ready to expand beyond our traditional South West heartland”.
Hub Box has come a long way from its beginnings on St Ives harbour, and now business expects to open its Royal William Yard restaurant ahead of Easter.
It is moving into a 3,400sq ft unit on the ground floor of the Grade1 listed Melville block, and is planning to open another two or three sites in 2022.
Looking further ahead, Mr Boon said: “We believe that between coastal locations and major towns and cities in the UK there is scope for 100-plus sites and we are busy negotiating on a number of opportunities as we gradually look to ramp up the Hub Box roll-out”.
The first phase of the restoration of Melville building is scheduled to be completed by mid-2022 with other new occupiers lining up to join Hub Box and the Everyman cinema.
Bosses at Urban Splash, the regeneration specialist which has been developing Plymouth’s Royal William Yard for nearly 20 years, said Everyman Media Group Plc is due to begin fitting out its triple screen boutique cinema in the yard at Easter 2022. It means the cinema should be on schedule for the curtain to go up in late summer. Meanwhile, negotiations are ongoing with a restaurateur, offering a cuisine not already found in Plymouth, about opening in one of three ground-floor retail/hospitality units currently unclaimed.
And a large professional services firm is in talks about moving into office space on the first and second floors of the block. It would neighbour space already earmarked for co-working company BLOCK, which is taking 17,000sq ft across two floors and will also create a coffee shop, wine bar and business lounge, which users can join in the way people use airport business lounges. It means just two ground floor retail/restaurant units, on the right hand side of the building facing the Factory Cooperage, are currently totally unspoken for in the first phase of the restoration. Urban Splash is keen to hear from any potential tenants.
