Former Dragons' Den star Sarah Willingham’s cocktail bar business has reported “record” results over the Christmas period. The entrepreneur said this was despite the decision by rail unions to stage strike action during key trading weeks for the hospitality sector.
The AIM-listed Nightcap group, which owns the Cocktail Club, the Adventure Bar Group and the Barrio Familia group of bars, posted revenue of £12.9m in the second quarter of the current financial year.
This reflected a 61% increase on the £8m recorded in the same quarter in 2022 and a 4.7% like-for-like increase. Revenue for December was £5.9m, a 72% rise on the £3.4m made in the same month a year earlier, a like-for-like increase of 28%.
Meanwhile, revenue for the six months to the start of January 2023 stood at £23.2m - up 49% up £15.6m for the equivalent period in FY2022.
Ms Willingham said the results were “testament” to the resilience of its target market of “high disposable income Millennial and Gen Z customers”. She added: "As we approach our second anniversary since our IPO, I could not be prouder of the entire Nightcap team.
“To achieve quarterly growth of 60.9% in revenue and 4.7% growth on a like-for-like basis represents a monumental effort, not least during a time when rail unions deliberately chose a number of the biggest most important weeks and weekends for hospitality, for their series of significant rail strikes, including the incredibly important Christmas weeks.”
The firm opened six new sites during the period, including a venue in Bristol under its Tonight Josephine brand in September, taking its total number of sites to 36.
Nightcap said it had also closed the Cocktail Club’s site in Bethnal Green, London, by way of a creditors' voluntary liquidation process of the relevant group subsidiary.
The company said the venue was a “legacy site” which was used initially as its training academy and was not trading to the public at the time of closure. Three of its directors - Ms Willingham, her husband Michael Toxvaerd and Toby Rolph - are on the board of the Craft Cocktail Company, which is the subsidiary that holds the lease.
Nightcap’s board said the closure of the Bethnal Green site would have “a small positive impact” on the group’s future trading.
The group's cash position (including cash in transit) as of January 1 was £5.5m, with a total bank debt of £9.6m resulting in a net debt position of £4.1m.
Bosses said they were confident, if further rail strikes or “other major interruptions” were avoided in the second half the year, for the company to trade in line with current expectations.
Nightcap, which swung to profit in its first full-year of trading, said in November it would slow down its plans to add more sites to its portfolio, citing the cost of living crisis inflation, rising energy costs, and supply chain price pressures on cocktail ingredients.
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