Loungers to invest £100,000 in training academy.
Loungers 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 and 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.
Watershed is led by Stephen Waters, who was head of the management academy and director of Pitcher & Piano, the leading edge bar restaurant groups set up by Piper, and Zoe Paskin, who was instrumental in the early success of the Brown’s concept with Jeremy Mogford.
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.