Boxpark, the UK’s award-winning dining, leisure, and retail concept, has published its latest accounts in which the Group’s revenue increased by 178% in the year to April 2022.
In the reporting period, Boxpark's revenue surged to £18.9m from £6.8m. Whilst these figures demonstrate the impact of covid closures in the last period, the latest financial report also highlights the Group’s impressive growth versus pre-pandemic levels as revenue rose by a quarter (24%) in comparison to the year ending April 2020, driven by a number of strategic changes made across the business.
The growth follows LDC’s investment in Boxpark in September 2021 which has enabled significant investment across all operational aspects of the business to enhance the customer experience.
The company introduced the option of mobile ordering of both food and drinks directly to tables immediately after reopening from Covid-19 restrictions, but now this has been developed further into a market-leading multi-basket ordering system, enabling customers to order food and drinks from multiple different traders all in one transaction.
The group has also invested heavily in its ‘Black Card’ loyalty card program. With over one million active users, the Black Card” enables customers to benefit from offers and exclusive access to various Boxpark events, and will enable the Group to focus on hyper-targeted communications and bespoke offerings.
As well as technology, Boxpark has invested heavily in its people with a new employee benefits and training scheme, as well as senior hires including its Head of Marketing and Head of People & Culture.
And the growth is set to continue with three new sites in the pipeline. With Boxhall Bristol and Boxhall City marking the launch of a new sibling concept,Boxpark Liverpool will be the first of the existing format venues outside of London and will be the latest addition to the ongoing regeneration of the Baltic Triangle.
The group has developed a track record of playing an important role in the urban regeneration of cities and town centres, including its iconic site in Croydon. After successfully attracting millions of visitors into the Borough each year and creating hundreds of local job opportunities, the Group has repaid its loan from Croydon Council in full, which was used to finance the construction of Boxpark Croydon.
In May 2022, Simon Champion was appointed CEO as Founder Roger Wade stepped into a Non-Executive role. Having joined the business at the start of 2018 as CFO, Simon ran the sales and finance teams, and led the investment process in September 2021, moving at that time to the role of Managing Director.
Before joining Boxpark, Simon was CFO at Propercorn where he oversaw the group’s first major equity raise. Prior to that Simon was CEO of easyHotel plc.
Simon commented on the latest accounts, “We are obviously delighted with our 2022 results and the changes we were able to make to our business in that period to enable us to grow further.
'And whilst we are optimistic about our future trading, we know that the hospitality industry is facing tough times, so we need to continue to adapt to changing trends in the eating-out market and keep innovating and enhancing our offering to suit our customer.”
'This set of results shows we can do that, so we are hugely excited for the next few years”.