Belfast-bound bar group facing cost challenges

Belfast-bound bar group facing cost challenges

The London-based hospitality group behind plans for the redevelopment of the building formerly occupied by Café Vaudeville in Belfast has admitted that it’s facing unexpected cost challenges.

Shares in the Revolution Bars Group plummeted by 30 per cent earlier this month after the company, which operates more than 60 bars across GB, said that it expected a series of unforeseen developments to impact its revenue streams.

At the end of last year, the group unveiled its plans for a new Revolucion De Cuba outlet inside the listed, two-storey building on Arthur Street. This will be its first venture into Northern Ireland and the new bar should provide around 70 jobs.

In March this year, CEO of the Revolution Bars Group, Mark McQuater said that he was very much looking forward to bringing the Cuban experience to the city.

However, shares in the group nose-dived during one morning’s trading late in May after Revolution warned that it expected to be negatively impacted by increases in the cost of the living wage and the new apprenticeship levy as well as an above-inflation increase in business rates.

“These increased costs will be more than anticipated in the current year,” Revolution warned in a statement.

In the last year, Revolution has opened five new Revolucion De Cuba bars and one new Revolution bar and while the underlying sales performance of these premises remains on track, the group conceded that they are taking longer to mature to full profitability than had originally been expected.

Brian Nixon, a director with Whelan Commercial Ltd. in Belfast, said that while he wasn’t au fait with the exact extent of the difficulties faced by the Revolution Bars Group, he still felt very optimistic about their chances of making a success of the Belfast venue:

“I have been in one of their properties across the water and they are very good at what they do,” he told LCN. “I think that this location in Belfast is ideal for what they are planning and I think it will be very good for the hospitality trade in Belfast.”

The Revolution Group is the first major GB chain to enter the NI market since JD Wetherspoon arrived here in the 1990s.

At this point, there are plans to expand further in Northern Ireland over the next couple of years.