Loungers to invest £100,000 in training academy

26 February, 2013

Loungers, the cafe/bar/restaurant group, is investing £100,000 a year in its new staff development programme which starts in March this year.

The group, which currently employs 700 staff across its 25 Lounge café/bars and five Cosy Club sites and is targeting 70 sites by 2016, have created a 30 month rolling training programme covering all management positions.

In addition to comprehensive, and existing, internal training, Loungers has teamed up with industry-focused training company Watershed and developed a training programme that will be offered to all management positions from supervisor level upwards.

The training providing by Watershed will comprise up to eight day courses a year, dependant on position, which will focus on mechanical and emotive skills such as influencing and behavioural skills to profit performance and leadership development.

The externally sourced training has been designed to complement Loungers’ existing internal training days which covers all departments of Loungers’ multi-faceted operation, from creating top baristas trained by Clifton Coffee Company, to WSET and licensing courses, to food based NVQs for front-of-house staff and chefs.

Watershed is led by Stephen Waters, who was head of the management academy and director of Pitcher & Piano during the early 90s, and Zoe Paskin.

Waters said: “I’m excited by the Lounge café/bar and Cosy Club concepts, I see them building on their 30 site success well and feel that Loungers is a company that we want to be involved with, they’re clearly going places. From what we have seen already, they have a great team supported by solid, dedicated management and with the Watershed programme they will become even better at what they do, for longer, with an even more cohesive and satisfied staff force”.

Jake Bishop, Loungers operations director said: “Clearly committing to invest £100k+ a year represents a huge investment for any business. However, we firmly believe that by investing in our people and in particular helping them to develop their personal skills the business will grow ever-stronger and that strength in depth will help the business to meet the demands of rapid expansion”.

• Loungers’ next opening will be Impero Lounge in Portishead on 6 March. This will be followed by the opening of their 6th Cosy Club in Exeter on 15 April. A further nine sites are planned in for 2013.